2019 LT Redesign: Initial thoughts?

Next week Chris (@conceptdawg) is coming up to Maine and we're going to spend ten days planning and doing some work toward a LibraryThing redesign, which @conceptdawg is leading.

To be clear "design" is about the look and feel of the site, its navigation and structure, and the ways it adapts (or fails to adapt) to the many browsers and devices out there.

Two questions

We'll post more threads about it, especially if we have questions. For now, I'd love members to answer:

1. What do you think we should focus on in a redesign? Try especially to think back to what LibraryThing felt at first, before you knew it well. Or tell us what friends of yours said, especially if something about the site turned them off.
2. What sites or apps are you finding yourself using and pleased by, design-wise?

More info than you require!

The main goals of the redesign are:

1. To make LibraryThing fully accessible on all devices.(1)
2. To make LibraryThing easier to use, with more intuitive and findable navigation and features, while also indicating how powerful it is. (LibraryThing is more powerful than some of its competitors, but time and again I've heard people say it looks the opposite!)
3. To refresh and update the look of the site.
4. Important but hard-to-explain technical improvements.(2)

The hope is that, by the time Chris leaves, we have a rough draft of the purely visual elements of the design, a unifying theory of site navigation, templates for some typical pages, and a good idea of the project, including the resources required.

Our goal is to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. We can't redesign everything at once--we don't have a dozen programmers, and users would be very confused. All major "pages" that exist now will exist after the redesign. We hope to balance improving the site for existing and future members—and not freaking people out too much.

As always, we want member input. But design is tough to discuss in such a forum. By definition, the people most likely to talk to us here are the ones that the current design did not send away! The line between design and features is also tricky to navigate. @ConceptDawg will be doing all sort of front-end work, some of which will seem like "features" to users; but he's not going to be changing features at the deepest level.

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Footnotes:

1. We're still talking through how to square LibraryThing's information density and the needs of mobile phones. It's common now to design things so that the web and phone see the same stuff, but the design changes to fit the space. We did this with Litsy and TinyCat. But LibraryThing is a harder problem. "Fitting" a popular work page (e.g., Twilight) onto a phone can't just be a matter of reflowing the content.
2. If you're interested, we need to simplify, systematize and abstract the front-end code, clearing away much of the technical brushwood that holds us up, and improving responsiveness and maintainability. For example, LibraryThing was largely built on the Prototype and Scriptaculous framework--which looked very at one point, but lost out to JQuery. We also have a lot of competing stylesheets going on, and no central place for some of the things that ought to have them (e.g., page metadata).

While I am all for a responsive design and modernising, personally my top wish is #4, the technical improvements. I spend a lot of time on LT, and there are so many things that just don't work quite right, and for which the bug reports get no response, or the fix doesn't "stick". I suspect that technical improvements might make solving bugs easier, and save time in the long run that means that there is more time for other improvements.

However, I realise I am probably not speaking for the majority here, and that's ok. I really like that you guys are going to spend time on this, it is good to hear that LT is still important (it sometimes feels like TinyCat, Litsy and the paid activities win out).

I'm going to think about this for a bit, but right now I have a "please don't" request.

I'm all for improving how the site works on phones and tablets. But I have seen too many sites do that in such a way that they become difficult, if not impossible, for computer users. So I'm asking you to be very careful about that.

>2 divinenanny: Agreed.

Also: so many obscure aspects of the site are basically unfindable unless you already know to look for them, and there should be some way to get at them other than trawling through years-old threads. Like, where was that library-series-data-adding feature, or how do I link venues and data sources again? These features are not even buried with links in obscure places; they're completely invisible unless you happened to read the release announcement.

I also think that whatever happens with the new design, it's going to need documentation. As in, document the living crap out of it, preferably with videos where possible. I think a lot of newer users would be glad to pitch in on improving data if they had the first clue where/how to start. (cf. this poor librarian: https://www.librarything.com/topic/25107#6837548 )

I'd like to see a much broader swath of the user base pitching in at low levels than a few highly productive members each wishing they had 100-person teams to help them work through vast untouched data wastes.

A clueful user base is a helpful user base, and right now, we have a very small clueful contributor caste -- most developed over years, but also including a few hardy souls who have mastered a near-vertical learning curve largely on their own, since the clueful caste no longer has much to discuss and doesn't do much outreach -- and a large untapped pool of people who could potentially be improving data, given any guidance on how to do so. No wonder: all we've got in the way of documentation is disorganized, ancient, and obsolete historical threads and...well, we used to have a Wiki. There be dragons. I personally haven't seen it in years, probably because almost all of it is so outmoded as to be practically useless. Better design can create better organization and make features more discoverable, but it doesn't substitute for a manual documenting processes. We need something new. Something that doesn't suck. What's new and doesn't suck in contributory documentation frameworks?

Frankly, this is likely be a user-driven process, but I suspect that if you put out a call and provided a framework, you'd get volunteers. Actually, might make sense to start on this sooner rather than later. If we can define core functions and features we want to document, it should spur a lot of discussion on whether/why the way they currently work (in terms of UI design and workflow) could be improved.

How about a LTCTWTFM? (Pretty sure a good number will be able to suss out that acronym...)

>4 davidgn:
A clueful user base is a helpful user base, and right now, we have a very small clueful contributor caste

And this user base is getting smaller, because long-time annoyances are not fixed. More and more I feel, and I have seen other people agree, that there is no energy being put into LT. If LT won't put energy into it, why would I?

The best example? The very frequent outages of search and other features, and the serious lag on some features (waiting two weeks+ on being able to find a new venue in From Where!?!?). There are always very patient long-timers explaining this to users unaware of this "feature". It's a feature now because it has been happening for a long time now that we've come to expect nothing else....

>5 divinenanny: The manual may be a bit cutting in certain passages. ;-)
(I also foresee a Directory of Kludges, Work-Arounds, and Obligatory Slap-Dasheries.)

>4 davidgn:

How about a LTCTWTFM? (Pretty sure a good number will be able to suss out that acronym...)

For the rest of us, how about not being so obscure?

Also, could you explain what you mean by "clueful"?

For someone objecting to the site's obscure aspects, you've sure written a fairly obscure post!

we used to have a Wiki.

We still do. Except that most people have no idea how to find it, and, even when you do, you can't find things within it in any easy way.

>7 lilithcat: All right. LibraryThing Committee to Write the F****** Manual (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM)

"Clueful" in the sense of, at the very least, being aware of the existence of site features that do not immediately make themselves apparent in the present design. Ideally, also having some idea of how to use them -- or at least where to go to ask. As opposed to clueless, befuddled, utterly lost, all at sea, or overwhelmed and terrified.

The best manual is the one you don't have to write. But, yes, however we get there, we need to make things findable.

" It's common now to design things so that the web and phone see the same stuff, but the design changes to fit the space. "

Please, please, and a million please, don't destroy the LT experience I have as a laptop user just so people can see things in their tiny phone screens :(
I've stopped using sites in the past when this happened, and I love my LT cataloguing.

Edit: I've now read the previous posts and notice that lilithcat basically said the same thing on 3.

>10 ScarletBea: The solution that immediately presents itself is some sort of "clean view" vs. "advanced view." But that perpetuates the multi-version problem. (We still have that old site design trundling along unsupported, don't we?)

Oh, and can we get LT Local functional again as part of this? It's basically impossible to get venues added properly to the map, as addresses are pretty universally unrecognized. That's kind of major.

I also use LT mainly on my laptop. When I do use it on my phone, I squint, take off my glasses, and use the main site, not the app. I guess the main issue for me is knowing what I can get to from my home page and what I can get to from other pages — talking about the links on the left and right side of the pages.

I will think about this, but I don't consider myself a clueful user. I have no programming or web design experience.

One question: how many people take the Tour to find out how to use LT? Perhaps it should be more prominent?

>12 krazy4katz: But you have managed to figure out how a good portion of LT works and used that knowledge to contribute to it extensively. That makes you "clueful" in my book, certainly with respect to LT.

eta: I'll have to take another look at the Tour. It's been years, and I don't think it was around when I started.

>9 timspalding: The best manual is the one you don't have to write
Perhaps, but there are some features (for instance, the way "Add Books" works and the impossibility of copying another user's records directly except by an external script hack) that require background knowledge of the site's history and philosophy to grok. Even if you manage to achieve self-explanatory design perfection, this sort of unexpected behavior (versus other similar sites) will continue to puzzle people in the absence of some sort of primer/FAQ. This particular example has come up repeatedly in Talk over the years, but tellingly, I can't immediately point to an instance.

eta Or as one more example: you might at least try advising people at the outset that there are reasons they might want to use sources other than Amazon... (It's kind of late in the game now, but even just a well-placed sentence or two, causing a small percentage tweak in user behavior, would lead to increased accretion of good library record data in Overcat and decreased importation of Amazon garbage-data going forward).

I currently use LT because I love the way I can catalogue my own books. I like the tagging system, the ability to chose the edition I want (or upload it), and the various layouts. Beyond that, I love the group talk here. I find it much more meaningful book talk than other sites I've explored.

I very rarely recommend this site to my reading friends, though, for many reasons. It is much easier to add books, track your yearly reading (and follow friends' yearly reading), see what your friends are currently reading, etc. on a site like Goodreads. I think it would be good to add some of that here. I wish I could "friend" the people who I communicate with regularly on LT and that it then actually meant something. For instance, I wish I could view friend only reviews for a specific book I'm considering viewing. Then I wouldn't have to wade through dozens of reviews to find the ones that are meaningful to me.

I also wish that the app included a way to tag books when you upload them, as you can on the full website. I find that I don't use the app for adding books because of that, even though it's otherwise more convenient to scan the book.

Also, as others have mentioned, there are good features here that are impossible to find. I remember having fun with the Lists feature for a while, but I never go back because I cannot find it.

Really, I love this site and spend a large amount of my internet time here, so you're definitely doing a lot right, but those are a few of the quirks I'd like fixed.

I can only hope you take a long hard look at the Recommended Site Improvements group - there's tons of great ideas there.

One of my pet peeves on LT (besides the near impossibility of finding certain pages because the only way to get to them is through a link on a page you've never heard of and where it's not obviously there would be a link to the page you want to go to) is a good clearing up of the covers. Picking a cover for your book is nightmarish when you have to scroll through often hundreds of images, many of which are the exact same image but in different resolutions. I want there to be a grouping of these images so that only one is immediately visible and when that is clicked on (or right-clicked or whatever) you can choose the resolution you want if there is more than one available. Also, it'd be nice to be able to pick cover based on language (or country) edition. So that at the top of the cover page you can choose to specify only Spanish (or French or Russian or whatever) covers and not have to go through the others. Of course, you should be able to choose "all language editions" too. This would make it much easier, more streamlined and less of a time-suck when you're looking for a particular cover.

>15 PawsforThought: Seconded on scouring the RSIs. Lots of good ideas have gone there to languish.

Whether it's the Wiki (*cringe* at current overall state) or something else (FAQs, "101 power tips", etc.), SOME form of user guidance needs to get some prominence here. Either that or Tim really needs to work on his telepathy, because it's not working.

(And no, Tim, for the 27th time, the ">" plus post number to refer to a previous post in a Talk thread is NOT self-documenting. Another perennial that comes up in talk threads with people scratching their heads...or just trying to use the feature and chronically failing.)

Actually, in the vein of that parenthetical: The gloss for "Touchstones" at right is helpful and necessary, but it doesn't, for example, document how to "force" a touchstone that is ambiguous or not yet in site search.

1) It's not immediately apparent that such a thing is possible in the first place, as the feature is undocumented. Likely outcome: user tries to create touchstone on newly-entered book, fails, gives up, and may now think "touchstones are broken." The HTML-literate user may create a hyperlink manually, but it won't be indexed in the touchstone/mentions system.

2) It's also not immediately apparent what the terminology would be for this feature. "Forcing a touchstone" definitely makes the Family Feud list, but it's not the only thing people in search of such a feature might go looking for.

3) The only extant documentation I'm aware of for this feature is in threads like this one. https://www.librarything.com/topic/258919#6077358

If visual clutter is the problem, perhaps a series of strategically-located "That's nice. Tell me more. What else can I do here?" links, directed to some sort of curated knowledge base entry (or, if we really must -- particularly given its current state -- the damn Wiki) that pulls all of these arcana out of ancient Talk threads and puts them together so that the prospective power user can easily find them and learn them. (Or at any rate, can have them available. I still can never remember how to force a damn touchstone. Every time I want to do it, I have to Google-search for some years-dead Talk thread where it's discussed somewhere in post #17.)

Not sure what this should look like. Tooltips are way too limiting, pop-ups are annoying, and links to a distinct wiki/knowledge base...but maybe making available some form of whitebox cheatsheet (perhaps duplicated from elsewhere, like in a wiki/KB, for easy instant reference) might be a reasonable solution?

To build upon some of the suggestions in >16 davidgn:, what this site needs, more than a redesign, is a single, easily found place that contains DOCUMENTATION. The number of things I've learned here by running into a brick wall, and *then* discovering that there was a door, right there, six inches away, should break someone's heart.

Really, I'm not kidding. BEFORE you go off and change everything (even little tiny things), please consider documenting how you believe it works now, and then write documentation for every single thing that you change, and perhaps even write notes as to *why* you're changing it, what it's replacing, and how the new thing will work.

ETA: Please, please, please, do not direct me towards the Wiki, which ought to just be deleted. You have some decent stuff in it, sure, but it is very unpleasant to look for anything useful in it.

If we're ginning up inspiration:

Here's something that comes to mind for me as a top-notch example of useful, semi-crowdsourced documentation: https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides
Topical guides by various not-in-house authors, each authoritative in its scope. Perhaps a model worth pondering.

And here's someone pondering crowdsourced documentation in general. https://idratherbewriting.com/2017/03/08/crowdsourcing-docs-with-github-docs-as-... (And by someone, I mean a technical writer. It's one thing to cherish an ideal of obviating the need for technical writers via earthshatteringly intuitive design. It's quite another to convince oneself that one has already done so in the face of all evidence to the contrary...)

A few quick responses:

* Basically every page on the site has a corresponding "Help" page on the wiki. Just click "Help" at the top right of the page. You can do so now, to see how it works.
* The page has a handy section "Using Touchstones." This explains how Touchstones work.
* I don't think that "forcing touchstones" is a common use case, but you will see it documented there even so.

In case your touchstone does not work or you cannot find the work/author in the extended list, you can manually force a touchstone to appear by using the work/author ID.
Example: \5403381::Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone\ by \\rowlingjk::J. K. Rowling\\.

* Are people--you?--unaware that every page has a help page? Perhaps. This is the sort of thing we want to bring forward. But I don't think a link present at the top right of every single page of the site is quite as hidden as all that. I wager the problem is simply that there are too many buttons up there. We aim to reduce them, but I suspect that will have push-back.)
* The page there is too complex, IMHO. It should stick to basics, leaving details for somewhere else. But this is where we may disagree. In either case, it could use a good edit.

>19 timspalding: I haven't used the help function in years -- probably conditioned by the repeated experience that it was no longer proving helpful to me personally most of the time -- plus, poorly organized and hard to navigate. At any rate, I had somewhere along the way forgotten that it's meant to be contextual.

Thinking about it, though, that's probably not an accident: there is no visual cue that the help function is contextual. Its location and appearance is invariant. Looking at it, I'd guess it takes me to a site-wide "Help" homepage of some sort. Ideally, the access to contextual help should for a website not live invariantly in the top-right corner but be visibly associated somehow with the particular context. Notwithstanding the fact that things sometimes worked that way in Windows 3.1, the visual communication here is faulty.

Also, I'd argue that you could distill that wiki page into both an (edited) full-length article (or, ideally, a series of more manageable articles) on the one hand and a comprehensive (albeit skeletal) cheat-sheet on the other.

--------------------------

Just thinking out loud...would it be possible to do something like embedded help in which the navigation mirrors the navigation of the site?

Look here:
https://www.knowledgeowl.com/home/whats-so-great-about-contextual-help

Under the heading "Embedded Help" in this example (which presents Embedded Help in GMail), there appears a box at right with navigation headings of "Computer"/"Android"/"iPhone and iPad." These, of course, are positioned under the presented body of contextual content and allow the user to view different subsections of that body of content. A good idea in itself. However...

Would it be possible (without too much mucking about, and using an off-the-shelf framework of some sort) to reproduce LT's top headings (or their rejiggered replacements) at the top of a box like that, above the content, such that navigating the embedded help would precisely mirror navigating the site itself? If so, dead simple navigation for all. No more "can't navigate the Wiki," and also encourages browsing of the embedded help by many, frequently, and prevents help pages from mouldering in poorly-edited obscurity. (Perhaps a system of curated semi-static help pages promoted from more freeform discussion-oriented Wiki pages?)

(Incidentally, note also the strategically positioned "Learn More" links in this example as well. To crib from Google is no shame. They have bottomless resources to devote to the goal of visually streamlining complexity.)

It's not just a matter of too many buttons, but that the signout button is in the middle of the others. On my tablet it is too easy to click on the sign out when I want the button on one side or the other. Help is much narrower than my finger. Not going there.

>19 timspalding: I've been on LT for over 7 years and never knew about the Help button until you post just now. Because of its location, I just assumed that that button was about log-in help or things like that, because that's the sort of thing Help buttons at the top right corner usually is about.
A Help button for the page I'm on would be located somewhere else on the page. In the case of touchstones, it'd be roughly where the Touchstone explanation is today. I completely agree with >18 davidgn: that the touchstones are near-impossible for anyone but people who've been on LT since it's inception to figure out how it works in more complex cases (like when forcing a touchstone).

>22 PawsforThought: I've been on LT for over 7 years and never knew about the Help button until you post just now. Because of its location, I just assumed that that button was about log-in help or things like that, because that's the sort of thing Help buttons at the top right corner usually is about.
A Help button for the page I'm on would be located somewhere else on the page.

Bingo. You and everyone else. In this case, it's not a matter of "too many buttons" but a fundamental error of visual communication. No budget for it, I'm sure, but I GUARANTEE that usability testing would confirm this in spades.

In this case, it's not a matter of "too many buttons" but a fundamental error of visual communication.

Well, they're not polar opposites. I agree that it's more than just too many buttons, but, for comparison, I tallied up clickable elements on the top nav of some sites:

LibraryThing: 16 (if you have TinyCat)
Facebook: 11
Goodreads: 11
YouTube: 8
Litsy: 7
Intagram: 5
TinyCat: 3 (inside catalog)

To really get into this is to start at the wrong end of the telescope, but, FWIW, I want to move to the sort of contextual help we made on our Syndetics Unbound admin site. I can't show you it, though, since it's login-only. But basically, the help is labelled and also has an icon. Clicking it SLIDES in help from the right. If there's more than fits on screen, it can go to the full Wiki.

FWIW, the complexity of the top nav was forced by the fact that we can't use any drop-downs. Why? Because the catalog page uses frames. This has to change. I don't want to go drop-down crazy, but basic account functions should be accumulated under a drop-down on the right—as on almost all sites now.

Anyway, this goes to one of the most basic things we're looking at—global navigation.

>24 timspalding: Oh, don't get me wrong. In general terms, there are definitely too many buttons. :-)

That's just not what's wrong with your contextual help.

>24 timspalding:

Meh. If the help were all by itself on the far right, it would be noticed much more easily.

More generally, however, the goal should be to avoid needing help pages.

FWIW, people differ, but a LOT of people never read help pages on any site. I never do. Absolutely never. I'd rather press a million buttons and zoom around aimlessly on a site than go into a help page.

Other people are different, of course. This is probably like the way there are two types of shoppers in an unfamiliar store—those that wander and those who look for maps and keys. But I don't that the main problem with LibraryThing's design is the lack of comprehensive and detailed help pages to a site that is, well, often confusing.

To repeat some questions:

1. What do you think we should focus on in a redesign? Try especially to think back to what LibraryThing felt at first, before you knew it well. Or tell us what friends of yours said, especially if something about the site turned them off.
2. What sites or apps are you finding yourself using and pleased by, design-wise?

>26 timspalding: I'm close to your position on that. Going to a help page is a terrible browsing burden. What I will do, though, is reference cheat sheets -- provided they're instantly and frictionlessly available and I can scan for something and apply it within five seconds. In that case, I'm a happy guy.

That said, if I'm actually interested in learning the minutiae of a site for its own sake (LT may be the only example of this, at least this century), I'm willing to read a manual or help page if it's well-written. And I can imagine that anyone wanting to use LT for institutional purposes (or, a fortiori, wanting to TRAIN others to use LT for institutional purposes) -- or even, for that matter, the individual approaching and evaluating LT as a means to an end for the purposes of a defined personal-project -- will always appreciate comprehensive documentation.

>27 timspalding: Beyond what I've said, it will require some reflection. I'll think on it a bit. Of course, I'm negatively qualified, as are most of us posting here.

Y'know, considering how much you've spoiled them lately, you might try nicely asking some Littens to launch themselves at LT and make careful note of their angles of rebound. ;-)

Don't know whether this is the sort of plea you're looking for but it's something that took me aback when I was new and has become consistently frustrating--The site would be so much smoother to use if links were opened in new tab or failing that if one could readily return to original position on page with the link or failing that at least return to the same bloody page. Easy enough to get back to a thread after following a link in a discussion but after following one in member reviews one is returned to top of first page of them; going back from a link in 'vous & nul autre' list doesn't even take you to the first page of say, bks shared with 5 members but to the default setting of shared with 2 members. A lot of unecessary clicking and scrolling.

1. I'm one of those using the classic salmon-pink version of LT rather than the newer chocolate-brown version. The colour scheme is an important part of "the look and feel of the site". The only time I see the brown version is when I'm logged out, changing accounts. I have no idea what brown version features I am missing by sticking to the pink, but I clearly don't miss them.

I would hate to see the plug pulled on the classic version, unless the redesign included an option to toggle between colour schemes.

2. I only ever use LT on a computer, so can I also echo lilithcat's request (#3) that PC user's experience not be disadvantaged by improvements to mobile phone and tablet users' experience.

>26 timspalding: I don't really want a help button leading to a help page. I want a help button that when I click it will open up a "window " (for lack of a better word) on the same page. Lots of websites have info buttons like that - I think it'd work really well on a place like LT, where there's already a lot of button to click on and we don't want to add any more. But like we've already stated, a help button up in the right corner is pointless because no one thinks it'll be related to the specific page you're on, but LT things in general.
If the help you're describing (from Systems Unbound) is the way I imagine it from your description, it's similar to how I'd want it to be. Could you not do a screen grab and post a pic?

Generally, I think the biggest issues with LT usability is exactly what davidgn said in >23 davidgn:. An error of visual communication. What might be super obvious for the creators and even "old" users isn't obvious for newer ones. The links at the top of the pages are only useful if you know what they can lead to. I like trying me best at being a "Helper", but getting to the different help sites isn't the easiest. Clicking on "Helpers" on the "More" tab just leads to an info page about helpers and a few links to CoverGuess and tag combination. But what about all the other ways you can help on LT? Shouldn't the Helpers page be full of links to all the ways members can improve LT's data?
And speaking of helping (and relating back to my previous issue with covers), the cover flagging process (or lack thereof) is atrocious. A lot of people who flag covers don't know the difference between the different categories and so flag it "wrong" (a cover that should be flagged "Not applicable to this work" might be marked "Not a cover" or "Spam"). There clearly need to be better information about what is what when it comes to flagging. Also, there needs to be some actual effect to flagging a cover and voting. But nothing ever seems to happen to these images. You can't even tell from the overview page that they're been flagged. Only when you click on it do you see that. Wrong covers ought to be removed, why else should we have marking? And there are tons of identical spam images all over LT - the exact same ones pop up over and over, both on the same book and on different books. There's about 10-15 ones that always show up (especially on the more famous titles). I dream of a way these could all be removed at once, from every title.

A few examples of images I'm talking about:

When redesigning the site please please remember some users are older (60 plus) and are a) not necessarily familiar with IT and/or b) have bad eyesight. So please, no flashy lights/GIFs, no fancy fonts, no stupid pop-ups in the middle of the screen that won't go away...

And don't expand the social media aspect at the expense of cataloguing the books - so many book sites just seem to be Facebook lite with a bit of cataloguing added on. Cataloguing my books is what brought me here and keeps me here - everything else is just embroidery!

Despite the intention of this thread, which I think was showing us that there is work being done on LT and that there is a future in which we, the users, have a small voice, it has made me lose hope. I cannot believe that there is no acknowledgement of the mountain of technical debt that is the foundation of LT. I can't believe we are talking about help without talking about why we need to explain things so many time over and over because they just don't work.

A redesign will not make the site more usable if the backend does not function. Why make Local better if you can't even be bothered to update the Google Maps license on the add local page? Or fix the huge search backlogs? Why make add books clearer if you won't fix the search backlog there either? Why talk about how a user can access their data without making it possible to export and import it, enabling a local back-up? And the outage of last year where data was lost has shown that this is not an unreasonable request (which it never was, even before that disaster). Who would trust the servers when they are breaking down so often? Why make obscure features like tag voting and such more well known when nothing is done with the results?

Wrong covers ought to be removed, why else should we have marking?

Exactly. I generally don't bother to flag covers, because doing so has no effect.

And that's a problem with some other LT features, such as the green "Add to your library" check mark. It doesn't do what it says it will do.

So in this re-design, either make these things have an actual result, or get rid of them.

>35 lilithcat: Yes, the ‘add to your library’ needs to do exactly that.

I’m quite often manually adding works (obscure OOP RPG titles) that then need to be combined with existing works after a lot of searching and faffing around with the workbench. If the ‘add to your library’ made a copy of that record to add to your library then that would help in that you don’t then have to combine the works.

I often come across stray RPG titles that then need combining; it would be nice if I didn’t have to do that and then keep an eye out in case a newly added work needs combining at a later date. Last year, I tidied up the Judges Guild publisher series and the amount of combining I had to do was not inconsiderable. Then 6 months later, more people add titles manually, and look, they need to be combined again because people don’t understand about combining.

>36 Maddz:

If the ‘add to your library’ made a copy of that record to add to your library then that would help

Of course, the difficulty there is that many works have a multiplicity of editions, so which "record" would you be adding?

>36 Maddz: That's not just RPG. Most times that I search the site I find things that need combining. Or if I look at an author page. Not always the particular book I'm looking for. There are a heck of a lot of obscure authors out there who have only written one or maybe two or three books with several works on the author page. Cleaning them up - if I have the time - always feels very satisfying.

What takes longer is getting a new combiner going. I'm not sure that any amount of improved Help or Wiki will really solve this. But a few messages showing simple combining possibilities in the members catalogue can get someone addicted. But it takes time to find the work that needs to be done and write the messages. And of course, only if the member has indicated that s/he wants to learn.

>34 divinenanny:

The technical debt is indeed connected to issues of redesign (see above, footnote 2 on "Important but hard-to-explain technical improvements.") We are hampered from fixing things by the complexity of the frameworks at play. Also by necessity redesigning a page will ask questions like "Should this exist at all?" and "does this work." On another level, though, I'm meeting with our UX designer next week, and the purpose of the meeting is particularly to talk about the things he's good at. Although Chris fixes bugs, it's not his chief strength. Others will be working on bugs, but this is a conversation about the UX. We can't talk about everything at the same time.

But, hey. Combining works is a fun pastime for some people.

I want to comment that LT Talk is much superior to the only other place I go and hang out. I have to grit my teeth and bite my tongue when I try to navigate there. So, good job there, LT!

>37 lilithcat: whatever edition the other person has. While there are many people who meticulously catalogue their books, there are also lots who aren’t as concerned. It would not matter to me if I didn’t have the correct edition in my library. I would just change the cover to make it look like the one I’ve read and I’d be happy.
I’m one of those people who, in the beginning, added a book and then deleted it if it was the wrong cover, or something was wrong in the info. I had no idea what combining was or why it would be necessary. Or that I could edit info and it was just changing on my own book.

>41 raidergirl3:

whatever edition the other person has.

But which other person? You see the check mark on the work page, which includes all the editions. There are more than 4500 editions of Wuthering Heights. Which would I get? You may not care, but lots of people do.

>41 raidergirl3: It would not matter to me if I didn’t have the correct edition in my library. I would just change the cover to make it look like the one I’ve read and I’d be happy.

Same. I don't give a toss about whether the edition I have on my shelf is the exact same as the one I have in "My library". My LT library is mostly just a list of books I own, whatever the edition, or want to own.
It took me years to learn about editing info on work pages and combining, and it's such a jungle that I still only do combining and separating if the work or author page is beyond horrendous.

I think a lot of this depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to keep the serious cataloguers here happy? Then a lot of what you're hearing is important.

Are you trying to attract new users? Then you need to focus on making creating and organizing a personal library and connecting to friends and making new "friends" a priority. If you want a younger crowd to invigorate the site, you really need to update those things. But maybe that's why you have Litsy now. For me, Litsy isn't enough. I tried it for a while but taking pictures of books and giving "surface" reviews isn't enough of a book connection. I love the groups here for that. But I wish there were better ways to connect that still kept the feel of serious book cataloguing and talk that I love here.

>39 timspalding:

I understand. But I hope you do understand that we sometimes get the feeling that technical debt, bugs, and general instability is just never a topic of discussion, and why that a redesign on top of technical debt does not inspire faith in the future.

Ah, I've made my point, and while a bit part of my online life is on LT, the pile of issues has inspired me to make it secondary to my main book database and has inspired me to solve the problems I experience myself.

I don't usually join in these discussions and I'm definitely not a "clueful" user, but a lot of what I'm seeing here is a little disturbing. First of all, I want to echo the pleas that you NOT make it more difficult for those of us who mainly access Library Thing via computer, not phones or tablets. I realize we're dinosaurs, but there are still a lot of us here.

Also, the discussion about covers and editions of books makes me a little nervous. I'm one of those weirdos who do get concerned about specific editions of books. Some of my books are obscure editions or have uncommon covers and I want to be able to show that in my catalog. I certainly don't want any cover images deleted, or any of my editions "combined" out of existence.

I've always loved the fact that LT is so flexible and easy to customize, and I hope that doesn't change. I realize that attracting new users is a necessary concern, but please don't turn LT into Facebook or even Goodreads. Please just keep the emphasis on cataloging books -- which is my main reason for using Library Thing and also what's kept me using it for over a decade now.

>46 jlshall:

or any of my editions "combined" out of existence.

Combining editions simply puts all editions on the same work page. Your data does not change.

but please don't turn LT into Facebook or even Goodreads. Please just keep the emphasis on cataloging books

It is impossible for me to say how much I agree with this! It is fundamental.

>46 jlshall: I absolutely didn't mean that everyone is like me in not caring about editions on LT vs. real life - I know many LTers care a great deal and I have the utmost respect for that (and I admire you all for it, I'm just not one of you). And I never meant (nor do I think I wrote in my message) that any covers that actually are real covers of the book in question should be deleted. The cover images I'm talking about is spam images or other images that are *clearly* not covers of the book (see the pics I posted above - none of those are covers of War & Peace, The Lord of the Flies or Bleak House - which is where I got them. I just want the obviously fake cover images that have no place in the cover section to be removed. And the others to be more easy to navigate (by corralling the images that are identical but with different resolution and making it possible to view covers that are of a certain language edition).

>13 davidgn: Thank you for your kind words. :-)

If one were to change the green button’s function, how would that work? Right now I use it to go to the add books page, then type ebook after the title. I then get the copy I am looking for and add it.

On another subject, I have never noticed the help button even after all these years. I will play with it and see what it does.

>49 krazy4katz:

Right now I use it to go to the add books page

That's how it works, but it's not how a lot of people expect it to work. It's not uncommon to see a post form someone wondering why clicking that did not result in the book appearing in their catalog.

>40 2wonderY: I would hate for this thought to be lost, and am commenting here without having read the comments following.

@timspalding, there are plenty of things that I might change, but I like very much the way that talk works. It used to be more clunky, and after your last major revision that affected it, I said nice things about you in my heart. Talk works well enough. Sure, there's things I'd change about it, but I'm keeping them to myself, because (and this is *important*) I'm pretty sure that they would make *me* happy, and *others* equally unhappy. So it goes.

The Wiki still sucks, though.

>50 lilithcat:

But as you said much earlier in this thread, there is no one book (for the most part), there are multiple editions, so it is impossible to add the "book". This is something I had to learn when I came here and it probably became obvious because most of my books are now ebooks.. Rather than change what the link does, is there a better way to explain it?

>46 jlshall:

I think that is the essence of LT for me. Why am I on LT instead of Goodreads, Litsy (and Shelfari in the past)? Because the most import thing to me is data. I want to register my editions, with my cover, and my quirks. I want to keep that data safe, and I want to always be able to register MY collection.

The social aspects of LT are secondary to that. For me that includes combining, CK data and recommendations. The main reason is that I don't trust community-sourced data on LT. My collection is mainly SFFH, and the Internet Science Fiction DataBase is way more accurate than LT will ever be. The forums here are nice, and I use them daily, but mainly to socialise, I don't use them for recommendations very often (I usually use blogs like Tor.com's monthly release posts and Locus for that).

Why am I on LT? Historical reasons mostly, it is where I started years ago to register collections. Due to limitations and bugs I have moved my database offline and use LT as a "child" of that database. LT gives me an opportunity to present my collection online so friends and family can check it out. I have been tempted to stop cataloguing on LT, but it is hard to leave a collection of 6000+ works. As a compromise I have automated the process of cataloguing and have stopped all CK and Local work.

>53 divinenanny:

I am data first too, although I guess I would include CK in with the primary stuff I am interested in - although of course CK isn't something I control.

The real problem from a system design viewpoint is that LT is trying to ride (at least) two horses at once. To cater for those who want an information-dense site with all the bells and whistles to make sure that they have control of their data and to cater for those who just want to add a book (who cares if it is the right edition) and don't even particularly want the other catalogue stuff let alone want to contribute CK or do combining / separating. That is really hard to do well.

Also there are people who will hate any visual redesign - look at all those who made a fuss when the site changed from salmon to chocolate 6 years ago.

Going even deeper than your stated reasons, why do you want to give LT a visual update and make it easier to use?

To put it more bluntly, are you interested in attracting more users and broadening your audience?

Already in this thread there are users saying that the top priority is to make sure LT doesn't become like one of those successful, popular sites—the horror! And if you agree with that, then there's no point in wasting everyone's time.

One idea would be to somehow impliment a divider among book, movie, and music within the libraries. Yes I know we could do it ourselves with titleing the sections off but it would make things easier to have them separated into their own categories per addition. Maybe even have this available on the profiles. Shown as books, movies, music with the covers shown. Just like how it is but 'updated' if you know what I mean.

Check out this thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/307867

"First of all, I want to echo the pleas that you NOT make it more difficult for those of us who mainly access Library Thing via computer, not phones or tablets."

I don't see why this idea is getting around. it's a false dichotomy. The point isn't to make LT less usable for computers, but to make it more usable for everyone--computers, tablets and phones. (And screen readers, computers with large screens, computers with small screens, etc.)

but please don't turn LT into Facebook or even Goodreads. Please just keep the emphasis on cataloging books

LT is already different things to different people. But I agree with you as far as it goes. The social at LibraryThing emerges out of the cataloging aspect, broadly understood. It's the part we do best. I have no intention of "turning LT into Facebook." I think we can learn things from many sites, but I want to run LibraryThing.

Let me reiterate, however, we are not talking about a complete site overhaul, we are talking about a redesign. Features and design can't be completely separated, but they aren't the same. We are primarily aiming to update the look of the site, provide better navigation, and improve the usability. We aren't going to be upending the apple cart.

The real problem from a system design viewpoint is that LT is trying to ride (at least) two horses at once. To cater for those who want an information-dense site with all the bells and whistles to make sure that they have control of their data and to cater for those who just want to add a book (who cares if it is the right edition) and don't even particularly want the other catalogue stuff let alone want to contribute CK or do combining / separating. That is really hard to do well.

Indeed. Thank you. This is one of the dualities we struggle with.

This is a major thing to consider at all times. It's hard to do well, but it's not a contradiction. At present, I think LibraryThing randomly alienates one or the other or both. We need to do the best we can to enable both uses.

Also there are people who will hate any visual redesign - look at all those who made a fuss when the site changed from salmon to chocolate 6 years ago.

No, of course. And I expect the salmon people will insist the colors not change. But we can't allow ourselves to be hamstrung by inertia. Whatever changes we make, we make. We aren't going to keep around old versions of pages. If a user declares they can't use LibraryThing any more because they need the global navigation frozen in 2013 amber, we will be sorry but not halt everything for them.

Already in this thread there are users saying that the top priority is to make sure LT doesn't become like one of those successful, popular sites—the horror! And if you agree with that, then there's no point in wasting everyone's time.

I feel you. I don't think it's an either/or. Making the site mobile friendly doesn't need to make it computer unfriendly. Making it easier to use doesn't need to make it childish. Doing cataloging well doesn't mean doing casual book-adding or social poorly.

I have no intention of being captive to people who despise change for its own sake. We need to update the UX of the site, period.

To put it more bluntly, are you interested in attracting more users and broadening your audience?

Yes. This is the walk before the run, however. We are talking the framework, not the details yet. We need the framework to do anything about the details.

>55 _Zoe_:

I certainly don't want LT turning into something like Goodreads.

Why?

a) I have a GR account and have tried it out, but it just doesn't contain the level of cataloguing I want.
b) GR is already very successful in its niche, turning LT into something that directly competes in that niche (by removing the level of cataloguing we are used to) would be the end of LT. It can only survive if it caters for a slightly different subgroup of people IMO.

That said there are some things that GR does right with its UX (and plenty wrong) IMHO.

I think what people are really trying to say is that they don't want LT to adopt the approach some sites have taken with almost a 'mobile' first approach with plenty of white-space. That they prefer more information-dense screens and LT's current 3 column approach

by removing the level of cataloguing we are used to

Holy frickin' smokes—NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT REMOVING THE LEVEL OF CATALOGING WE ARE USED TO!

This redesign is not about changing big FEATURES anyway. But if it were, I wouldn't be to make LT cataloging less detailed, but to allow MORE detail! I love cataloging. I want it to be simple and clear, but I by no means want to eliminate what LT does best!

I think what people are really trying to say is that they don't want LT to adopt the approach some sites have taken with almost a 'mobile' first approach with plenty of white-space. That they prefer more information-dense screens and LT's current 3 column approach

This is more to the point. I would note that LT is only sometimes what you describe. It's kind of all over the map. One column, two, three—even more than three a few places! Navigation here, there and everywhere—but not where it was on the other page.

I think one of the strengths of LT is indeed its "information density." This isn't going away. Okay?

Here's a problem to think about:

I love how Talk works right now and most of it shouldn't change (IMO). However, there are a few issues. For example, I had to block the Book Talk group because I couldn't stand the multiple new users per day who join the site only to post "what is the name of this book" without any other info, site interactions, or grammar. Obviously the note at the top of the group in Book Talk isn't doing its job. Some redesign or features could fix this. On some sites, you have to wait 12 hours after joining before you can post (would also cut down on spam). Or you could force users onto the "Name that book" group for their first few logins. Or something else.

If you make the site look like other sites, I might hate it. I come here for *words* and for a *break* from dumb icons and graphics-heavy designs that are good for mobile.

>62 reconditereader: The Welcome to LibraryThing group might be better than Name that Book. It's not just 'What is the name of this book?" and even those that are very rarely have useful subject lines.

>62 reconditereader: >63 MarthaJeanne: I agree that the people who come here just asking for the name of a book is a big nuisance. I haven't looked in a while, but when you join LT, is there a message that tells you to go to Name That Book? That might be another good place to put it— in large letters! I think preventing people from posting for 12 hours is not welcoming and will be frustrating to a lot of users, possibly reducing the number of people who join. Of course if people join just to ask about one book, that is not a very interesting member, but I suppose we have to live with that.

Thanks for your responses, Tim; they make me more optimistic about the whole project.

The #1 complaint that I've heard from new users is that adding books is a big hassle. If they're adding dozens of books by the same author, they don't want to do a new search every time; they want to go to the series or author page and quickly choose all the ones they want.

The underlying issue is the green plus and the need for a generic edition. People who want to add a book with just title, author, and cover need a way to do that.

Meanwhile, my own opinion is that personal data are also data that deserve to be recorded, made viewable, etc. There are ways in which LT's use of data really is more feeble than its most basic competitors: while I can record the date when I read a book, I have no way to bring up a list of all the books I read in a particular year. Etc.

>60 timspalding: >61 timspalding:

Yes I know Tim - I was just trying to articulate people's fears.

And yep LT is reliably consistent in being inconsistent.

One good thing about the current LT design is that it is full-width unlike some other sites. For those of us on computers with high resolution monitors that is great.

One good thing about the current LT design is that it is full-width unlike some other sites. For those of us on computers with high resolution monitors that is great.

Yeah. It would be easier—much easier—to go with a narrow page that's basically okay in all formats. But it's not something we can do. I want to use the whole screen too.

Look and feel changes are hard - especially to predict for people aren't on the site. Even here this thread will attract a tiny subset of LTs current users, and we're mostly happy(ish) with how things are.

Part of the look and feel though is things working as you expect them too - whatever that expectation is. For me that ratings and dates have some effect, they're not just a list of numbers, but that you can do things with my data rather than just look at it. The feel of LT is for a data heavy experience, so many fields, such intricate details. And yet currently mostly all you can do is look at it.

I don't care what colour it is, or how wide, simply can I see what I want and does it do anything.

Some random thoughts & ideas I've had while thinking about this:

Add books button - this is not at all intuitive. When I first started using LT I assumed it would add the book to my library, not take me to the add books page and do a search for books with that title. I've often thought it would be better for the add books button to take you to the manual entry page, with the title and primary author already filled in; that way people who really care about having all the data for their exact copy can fill it in, and those who only want the title and author can just click save.

Replying to talk posts - again, not intuitive. Having a reply button makes people think that using it will link their post to the one they're replying to in some way. Just automatically adding the post number when using reply would be helpful.

Post a new topic from Talk - get rid of this and replace it with a ginormous link to instruction on how to post and which common groups they could start with. It might cut down on the number of times we have to explain to new members where they can find help when looking for a forgotten title.

Help - I often feel I need a manual to figure out how to use it. It's hard to use, full of gaps and outdated information. Just look at the book combining page, for example: since it hasn't been updated since 2012 it doesn't mention the workbench, the single greatest combing feature in the history of ever. How is that helpful?! It would be so nice to be able to point to a helpful, easy to navigate help page when trying to explain some of LT's idiosyncrasies.

finish half-finished features - I'd especially like private books.

book stats and info - there is so much really cool stuff on LT, but it can be really hard to find and isn't always available in a way that is relevant to my library. Take the author nationalities: it's not hard to find, but it's just an ugly, useless pie chart. I know people have long been agitating for a map, or at least a list, but how cool would it be to be able to have a catalog view of author nationalities that could be filtered by collection, so you could, for example, see how many books by Russian authors you own versus how many you've actually read? And reading dates! I fill in the reading dates for my books, but why isn't there a way to see what I've read in a given year? Making all of the information that's already available easy to find and presenting it in a meaningful way would go a long way in showing off one of LT's greatest strengths.

I'm not sure how helpful any of this is, but I thought I'd put in my two cents.

About the What's the Title of This Book requests . . .

could there be a page that comes up when someone signs up, something like:

Welcome to LT.
Do you want help remembering the title of a book? Click HERE.
Do you want to take the tour? Click HERE.
Do you want to start cataloguing your books? Click HERE.
Do you want to find people who share your interests? Click HERE.
How can authors use LT? Click HERE.

Okay, pony. I asked for this a long time ago, and I think it's really simple.

On the author page, change "Combine with…" to "Combine with?" That might make people actually think about it. And perhaps a pop-up directing them to the rules for author combining, as there is now for adding author images.

>69 amanda4242: I agree with every one of your points, especially the author nationalities one.

>69 amanda4242: >70 Taphophile13: >71 lilithcat:. All good!

>69 amanda4242: I agree. So much data put to so little use in visualizations.

Hell, even if you don't want to build them into the site, there's got to be enough material to produce a dedicated blog just on LT DataViz. That should attract some attention.

>1 timspalding:

1. What do you think we should focus on in a redesign? ... Or tell us what friends of yours said, especially if something about the site turned them off.

Something that >68 reading_fox: >69 amanda4242: and >74 davidgn: said: too little of the present data is put to use in a way that people in 2019 expect their data to be used. More visualisations and read-by-year listings should be built-in. I like the way we can access a pre-filtered subset of our catalogue by language or by "from where?"; other things on the "stats and memes" page should work the same way: author nationality and author gender, for instance. And things I would enjoy browsing through more visualisations in the style of what book heights and the star ratings get.

I actually like that things like work and author combining are at least a little hidden and not starter actions. Perhaps the UI should split features in "Personal Cataloguing" and "Advanced features"?

CK is kept pretty separate from other types of info (because people would think they're individual-level only?), but work pages and series pages would benefit from spreading a little CK around: original publication year and original language, for instance.

2. What sites or apps are you finding yourself using and pleased by, design-wise?

I'll have to think about that.

A suggestion.

Have someone spend some time reading Talk, or divide it up. Go through Frequently Asked Questions, Bug Collectors, Recommend Site Improvements, and Talk About LibraryThing. Find what keeps coming up as pain points for newcomers - things that they report as bugs that are just How Things Work and things that they request as features that already exist. (Actual improvements are probably beyond the scope of a design project, unless they're easy wins.) You'll want to look both at things that get repeated different threads and ones that get the same thread bumped many times by different people with the same issue. Lots of people who find the site frustrating may make a single post expressing that frustration before leaving - while they're no longer here to participate in this thread, the history of that frustration sometimes remains.

>76 lorax: I like that idea. I do find a lot of repetition in both comments from "frequent flyers" and those whose user id's I haven't seen before. Clearly we would need to decide who looks for what AND if Tim and Chris would like the help. The only concern on my part would be making sure my bias on certain things wouldn't be a concern as well as my limited use of certain areas. Feel free to message me separately if you wish.

2. What sites or apps are you finding yourself using and pleased by, design-wise?

In thinking about this, I realized that I use very few sites or apps. The sites are use regularly are news sites and blogs, which are pretty irrelevant to this discussion. The only apps I use regularly are to pay for street parking and to find out when the bus is coming.

I guess I'm boring.

Maybe I should point out a couple that I hate?

my only input here is that I wish that users profile icons showed up next to their name when posting. sometimes I mix up people who have similar user names, because I'm glancing through quickly and not paying close attention. and some people have really cute icons, or change them for different occasions, and I only see those when I go to their profile.

not sure if this is even something that can be done, or if anyone else cares if it is. just my two cents :)

>79 Darth-Heather:

I have to say that I would not like that. I'm on another site that has that, and it creates far too much visual clutter for my taste.

77>

Glad you like my suggestion, but it's something that I was suggesting LT staff should do.

Darth-Heather (#79)

my only input here is that I wish that users profile icons showed up next to their name when posting. sometimes I mix up people who have similar user names, because I'm glancing through quickly and not paying close attention. and some people have really cute icons, or change them for different occasions, and I only see those when I go to their profile.

Please no. I realize it's become the norm, but I don't like it - I find it incredibly confusing. Usernames are consistent and unique. Profile pix are neither.

>82 lorax: I agree. I come to this site for words. I really appreciate that it isn't image-heavy!

I'm brown-nosing first & thanking Tim for all of the stuff that goes right here all the time. My addiction remains unabated.

For requests: could you do a reverse of Members w/Your Books, so that we could see whose lists we were on?

>76 lorax: In addition to that, if you want some feedback from new users, you might want to post a topic in Book Talk pointing to this thread. 'Talk About LibraryThing' is a specialized group and probably not on the awareness threshold for newer members.

BTW, you might want to make more prominent how members can customize their Talk feed. If I were a new member, I'd be overwhelmed by the firehose volume of All Topics.

I'd like to see the basic mobile site working again (currently it displays a truncated list of titles from a member's catalogue, but the links to the details of a book produce a blank page). Since the main site catalogue view doesn't work correctly on my phone browser (Opera Mini for BlackBerry), I find the basic mobile site very useful.

Tim, I think people are interpreting "intuitive" and "mobile-friendly" as "they're taking away our cataloging functionality" because of a trend across the web that I've noticed where sites are redesigned to be more "intuitive" and "mobile-friendly" but really all they do is take out half the information and "dumb it down." Like my 401k management site, where I can no longer see the exact breakdown of investments that my mutual funds are in or my health insurance site where I can no longer compare average prices between doctors. (But the graphics are prettier!) They tell me it makes it "easier to use" but it's only easier because I don't have to think because they aren't giving me anything to think about! I know I'm tired of the trend where the answer to "too much information" is to take away information (as if ignorance is power just because it's easier) and the answer to "I can't use this on my phone" is to make it more difficult to navigate on a desktop. For those who prefer text-based, information-dense sites, we're tired of everything catering to people who seem unwilling to read a full paragraph of text or spend more than half a second figuring out how a site works.

Anyway, back to the questions actually asked... I suspect some sort of new user guide would be nice. I'm willing to push buttons on a site until I get the results I want, but that seems to scare a lot of people. I'm also a librarian, so a lot of the hard-core cataloging features are familiar because of comparable features in other ILSs. I think the problem is the differing user bases: you seem to have a range of people ranging from "people who just want a title, author, and cover to show up in the catalog and they want it to be the right cover but don't otherwise care about the underlying data" to "casvelyn, who manually cataloged 3000+ books and DVDs across two accounts with a custom classification system because she's ridiculously precise and possibly a bit crazy" (and there are other people who are even more hard-core in their cataloging than I am (which is something I LOVE about this site!)) Barring some sort of "basic version" and "advanced version" of the catalog/new book entry that we could toggle between I'm really not sure about what to do with that.

I am not currently pleased by most of the sites I use, mostly because of my points in paragraph one. Well, Ancestry.com is actually pretty good. I've got multiple trees and a DNA test on there, and it's very easy to use and navigate. I suppose it's really a catalog in a way, if one can say one is cataloging one's ancestors. The "grid view" is not that great though, but trees are really the best way for presenting families, so that's where they've focused their efforts.

But I've always preferred sites that are less pictures and more text (which seems to correspond with less flash and more substance), so maybe I'm just the odd one out here.

ETA: I thought of another well-designed site: You Need a Budget (YNAB). Good information density, logical layout, you don't have to click through eleven Byzantine drop-down menu layers to find anything... and it's basically a spreadsheet. :) Oh well, I'm nothing if not consistent.

>81 lorax: Understood. I never was noted for my understanding of words I read and I think I understand. This exercise (the entire thread) is going to be interesting!

>87 casvelyn:

Amen.

casvelyn - your post reminds me of what Garmin did to their GPS software years ago in the name of making it easier. They took away being able to navigate by coordinates and also by intersection of streets. Crazy. I used both and then suddenly I couldn't. I think the coordinates are back, but as of the last version I got, not the intersections. Maddening.

Maybe there could be a training wheels mode where features are truncated or limited and a full-blown racing bike version where all the bells, whistles and mines of data are there.

>1 timspalding: I hope you're going to review this 2017 thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/256907 as a part of this process because I got my non-superuser friends to post there and as far as I can tell nothing ever came of any of it.

Gilroy compiled a list of the suggestions in the second thread here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/260411#6091717. Many of them have been mentioned here again.

From the thread norabelle414 links in #91 (thanks for tracking that down!), here was my suggestion at the time for how to re-do the "green plus" on a work page:

Here's what I'd do in an ideal world:

Replace it with a "Search to add" link (which duplicates current functionality, more clearly described) and a "Add basic record" link. The latter would open a Manual Add page with title of the most common edition + most common author name - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling, rather than Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal by Joanne K. Rowling - prepopulated, and the user could either save that basic record or fill out further information. Users who don't care about editions won't care anyway, and just pick the first result in the current system, and this way at least things are spelled right.

>90 Bookmarque: I think what is necessary is an organized layout. I consider myself a slightly experienced user. I do more than the the least amount but I don’t use the power functions of LT. I have discovered how to do more gradually over the years and maybe that is how it will always be for inexperienced people. Just have one site and let everyone explore until they reach their technical limit.

>92 lorax: And the manual add page ought to auto-combine with the record used to 'trigger' it. (Perhaps with a toggle? Something like 'this looks like an edition of this work xxx by aaa bbb; should your book be merged with that one? Y/N')

Hopefully, that should reduce the number of stray work editions around and help those of us who keep an eye on combinations.

1. What do you think we should focus on in a redesign?

I agree with the idea (in >61 timspalding: and also on the other thread) that a key characteristic of LT is balancing the data complexity with usability for users uninterested or unready to access the full set of tools and data. I think that should be a key focus: not picking one or the other, but how best to keep both options open to every user, even while "delivering" their preference at the time.

I'm thinking of some version of a Standard View and Advanced View, with a structure to support that. This would help guide novice users to what else is available, when they're ready. It also provides a consistent structure so wherever a user might be on the site, there's always a simpler and more complex view. Users would learn that in areas they use more, they could look for more complexity by pursuing that Advanced View track. Toggling between one and other wouldn't be difficult, would be familiar even in different areas, and would be "remembered" for each user.

I envision those two views as essentially nested views: the Advanced View can be collapsed to show fewer options and detail. That collapsed view is the Standard View.

2. What sites or apps are you finding yourself using and pleased by, design-wise?

I don't use much else on the web with this regularity, and nothing with this complexity. Those sites I use are one-channel, news-type sources. I suspect there isn't much out there that would be relevant for LT's specific design challenges in this respect.

I agree that a choice between a basic interface and an advanced interface is needed.

The basic interface, however, should offer some form of progressive disclosure. That way, features that one isn’t aware of can be discovered and the user is incrementally offered more advanced features in a single domain. Progressive disclosure won’t obviate the need for documentation, but it clarifies context and flattens the learning curve.

The advanced interface option allows the user to jump past all of the intermediate, incremental steps and access the finest granularity of functionality directly.

I’d like to see mathematical and boolean operators added to the search functionality: =, !=, , AND, OR, NOT, EQV, XOR.

I’d also like to be able to find books or discussions using some of the cataloguing data. E.g. Find ‘The First Folio of Shakespeare’ AND Dimensions > 35 cm

I agree with most of the above (especially that in ten years on the site I did not realize the help link was contextual, since a help link in the header is never contextual anywhere else. Plus semantically, nothing else in the header bar is contextual, so it's explicitly signalling that it *isn't*. I suspect in the past I've clicked on that list *wanting* general help and just assumed the help page navigation was terrible.)

In terms of specific requests for mobile:

1. I really like the current setup where the app is fairly basic and streamlined, but you can always go to the website for the full-features site. I know a lot of places are moving toward no app, just one mobile-friendly website, but I think LT is one of the sites where it makes sense to have the split.

There is an issue where people can't do something on the app and then come to Talk assuming that means they can't do it at all (and that's just the ones who get to Talk from the app), so I think making that split more explicit, especially on the app end, would be helpful. Maybe make it so when you run up against something the app won't do, it'll offer to open the site instead, or something. And vice versa, make the app more visible to new website users, and make it clear that the app is still powerful but more streamlined if you want to start there.

2. It won't matter how well you redesign the navigation if there's still basic stuff I can't do because it requires a double-click. Please code in an alternative to double-click in the catalog view for people using touchscreens. Longpress is your friend.

3. WE NEED OFFLINE CATALOG VIEW FOR MOBILE. The basements of creepy antique malls in once-abandoned factories off deserted highways in the Alleghenies tend to have really bad data connectivity, and that's where I need quick access to see if I already own this book most of all, before the axe-wielding ghost and/or proprietor catches up with me.

Offline doesn't need to be fully-featured! The third-party app (which no longer worked) just let you search an automatically-updated download of your catalog, and that's literally all we need for basic offline functionality: an automatically updated download of title/author/collection/maybe ISBN that can be sorted or searched offline. We don't need editing or social or global search or anything. It could even be a separate app if it would be too much work to make it an alt mode of the main app. But we need to be able to check our catalogs in creepy bookstore basements with no signal.

In terms of general friendliness of website to new users that I didn't see mentioned above.

There really needs to be a way to link to a page for a work that has all the basic information people expect to see on a page for a book: title, author, publication date and publisher info, isbns, summary/description, reviews, that sort of thing. Right now that information is split among multiple pages, mixed up among poorly-organized LT-specific stats and information that requires lots of scrolling to get through, and some of it can't even be found at all for many books without finding a book page, which is nearly impossible to do when logged out. I use GR when I'm linking to books on social media not because I like GR but because if I link to the LT work page people will not actually be able to find any information about the book.

To do this right you would really need the much-anticipated Editions layer, but even short of that, some sort of "work summary" or "bibilo info" page that included basic work-level information *plus* condensed list of book-level stuff like the most common covers, ISBNs, publishers, and dates, *without* having to scroll past a bunch of only-relevant-to-powers-users stuff and blank CK/recs fields, would be, I think, an amazing improvement in terms of making LT accessible to non-LT people.

ETA: Turns out this was also my top request in the 2017 thread.

>97 TempleCat: Point taken, though I do want to clarify that some of those operators do already work on Your Books Search—specifically AND, OR, and NOT.

For the second question:

--In terms of offline, the old third-party LT offline app honestly did everything an LT offline app really needed to do, and did it well. If you could just make an app that did that but was kept fuctional by you guys, that would be all you'd need.

--Google Maps is actually a really good example of an app that is mostly designed for online use, but acknowledges that there are important use cases that need offline, and has a seamless shift into a limited-but-does-what-you-need offline mode. I really wish more apps in general were as good as the the Google apps about this. (Google Drive is also good at this; my current workaround is keeping an LT export offline-accessible in Google Drive, but it's an annoying workaround, especially give how semi-functional the spreadsheet export often is.)

--The Libby app for Overdrive is a book-focused app that's super user friendly and easy to navigate (at least according to the customers at my library, whose 'how do I use this' questions suddenly dropped by about 90% when it went online.)

--Pika is an open-source software package for public library catalogs that you may already know a lot about, but I've used several public library catalog websites built on it and it does a really good job at building a streamlined but information-dense website that works equally well on desktops and phone screens. Not that I think LT should look like Pika (also there's some annoying bugs and the record grouping system they advertise doesn't actually work very well in the field), and there's a lot less social/interactivity going on, but I think it's a good example of responsive design done well on an information-heavy site.

I'll second >87 casvelyn:'s mention of YNAB. It's quite nice, and similarly information-dense.

Pocket Casts (https://www.pocketcasts.com) is one of my heavier-use apps (for all my podcasts), and while their redesign as of a few months ago has had some growing pains, their menus and various discovery tools and options have improved.

I haven't used it myself because I'm not much of an ebook borrower, but I've heard rave reviews from a few friends about Libby (Overdrive's newer ebook lending interface).

>101 lorannen:

Oops, I meant Libby not Boopsie in my post above yours! (I have edited it.) Libby is really great, and I do use it myself. (Boopsie is the catalog app we used to have before Pika made our website so responsive it was actually more mobile-friendly than the app.)

While I'm thinking about it, please, please, please can we get Custom Call Number on the Book details page?

>99 lorannen:
Oh! That’s cool! I checked the help wiki from the Your Books search screen before I typed the suggestion and there was no mention of any such operators. Was I looking in the wrong place? Maybe it’s under a different context?

>100 melannen: ff I love Overdrive, but can't stand Libby, and couldn't get it to work anyway. I'll use the old app as long as I can. It is simple, works well, and doesn't have a lot of eye candy to distract me from the books.

>105 MarthaJeanne: I am glad! So far we haven't read anything about them getting rid of it.

TBH I think the biggest improvement of Libby over the old app is how difficult it was to set it up if you'd never used Overdrive before and needed to make an account. Once you got the old app rolling and were used to it, it works pretty well, but we had to walk a lot of people through setting it up and we almost never do with Libby, so it's interesting to know that you had trouble getting it to work at all.

But also you are an awesome LT power user and not somebody who thinks facebook is a web browser, so you're probably coming to it from a very different knowledge base than the average person we help at the library...

I'd like to suggest a 'go to top' on forums much like the 'jump to bottom' rather than scrolling up all the time.

>107 PumitHam: It's there - the arrow next to the timestamp on the post. Of course the fact that this wasn't obvious is interesting...

>107 PumitHam: Do you see the little blue arrow over on the right of the header to each message? Try clicking it.

>106 melannen: What's facebook? Actually I have heard of it, but LT is enough of a time sink for me.

The only time OverDrive gave me grief was when it blocked up while I was on holiday. Apparently I had logged in with a mistake once too often. It was easily cleared the next time I was at the library. Being locked out of OverDrive would have been traumatic, but we were in the UK and my pile of new (and used) real books was growing by the day.

@Mart1n Sweetie please don't assume I can see very well. With age comes many issues. But I am grateful for you telling me where to find it even with the snyde remark. Again, thank you!

@MarthaJeanne Thank you. You're the kindest one here!

>110 PumitHam: ??? I didn't see anything snide in >108 mart1n:.

>110 PumitHam:

@Mart1n's post wasn't snide, just pointing out that perhaps that arrow should be more obvious.

(P.S. It's considered rude to call people "sweetie" when you don't know them. And often even when you do.)

>112 Stevil2001:

Nor do I. Noting what people find 'non-obvious' and PumitHam isn't the only one to not notice the 'return to top' is kind of (partly) what this thread is about.

There is a mouseover on the icon saying 'Return to top' and the icon looks self-explanatory to me - or at least self-explanatory enough I would be brave enough to run a mouse over it, or even click it. Having a visual language that works for everyone is fairly difficult but I am not sure what other icon would be as good.

Also if you are using Talk on a web-browser on a computer then using Home and End (these are standard in your browser) works. If you are on a tablet or phone then of course you need the control on the message header.

There is a mouseover on the icon

Right there is one of the things that should be addressed for tablet/phone users. Since there's no mouse to hover with.

Thanks everyone! So very nice of you.

Bring back the salmon!

>58 timspalding: I don't see why this idea is getting around. it's a false dichotomy. The point isn't to make LT less usable for computers, but to make it more usable for everyone--computers, tablets and phones. (And screen readers, computers with large screens, computers with small screens, etc.)

It's getting around because people have experience of other sites making the immobile* version worse in the name of improving mobile. (Frankly, I have experience of both mobile and immobile being made worse in the name of improving mobile, but that's probably general incompetence rather than any widespread failure of design philosophy.)

Speaking of mobile, I do a fair bit of my LT'ing on my smartphone, and I find it works quite well. The issues I have are largely ones that are intrinsic to smartphones**, not things you could fix by a redesign. I use an iPhone 6S, so while the screen strikes a smartphone antediluvian like me as large, it's probably middling to small by 2019 standards.

* This is probably not correct terminology, but it should be!

** Somebody needs to invent a way for me to touchtype on a smartphone.

>117 AndreasJ: Gonna disagree with you a little. Please please please don't bring back the salmon... :)

I do agree with you that the site on mobile works fine.

But, to me it's how does it work (fine) vs. can I use it. And I find it not at all easy to use on my phone (and I annoyingly enough have a sorta big phone too). There's lots of pulling this way and that, and because of that clicking on links that I didn't want to, not to mention, a lot of times I try to click on a link (even with it zoomed in) and instead I get the one above it or below it (and I have pretty small fingers, don't know what it's like for people who have bigger fingers than I).

And there are ways to change the design a bit so that it appears at least better (I'm smart enough to understand it won't ever be perfect on such a small screen) on small screens.

>113 lilithcat:. Quite so. Thanks snookums.

>104 TempleCat: It's there, but a bit hidden: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/%22Your_books%22_Search, and perhaps should be spelled out more clearly. You'll see a few mentions/uses of AND, OR, and NOT in examples on that page, and at the very bottom, it does mention that they need to be capitalized in order to work.

>118 DanieXJ:

Problems like accidentally clicking on the wrong link could be alleviated by adding more white space to put things farther apart, but at the cost of less stuff fitting on the screen. I imagine people's sweet spots are going to vary wildly on that point.

(My fingers are hardly small, but my tolerance for "airy" design is perhaps unusually low.)

>121 AndreasJ: There can be some work on this by moving things around without actually adding whitespace - i.e., intermixing clicackable and unclickable things, changing where existing whitespace *is* (there's actually a fair amount in the current design, and it's not always well placed), looking at movement around the site and where misclicks are most likely to cause real problems.

Bring back the salmon!

No!

Basic updates I'd love to see:

1) On the Common Knowledge area, BETTER examples of what's expected, maybe even a light box pop up for help. This could be for the character field (where is the add a line button, for instance), proper syntax for awards and places, just as for instances.

2) Can we do something about the white background? Maybe make it a light gray? Something to ease the eye strain from the overwhelming brightness of the screen. (This has been a common request over the years.)

3) Eliminate the Green "Add to Library" button entirely, or else rename/reprogram it to work more like expected. There's been multiple comments/complaints about it for over 10 years. There's even a consolidated thread linking many of them together in RSI (ETA: Link to consolidated RSI since another just appeared today: https://www.librarything.com/topic/248001 )

4) In Talk, when one hits reply to a message, have it auto populate the >number set up. Also be sure to note in a light box or some other form that the forum isn't threaded and the message appears at the bottom.

I'm sure I've got more, but I want to read through more of the thread to keep from repeating too much.

>58 timspalding:: I don't see why this idea is getting around. it's a false dichotomy. The point isn't to make LT less usable for computers, but to make it more usable for everyone--computers, tablets and phones. (And screen readers, computers with large screens, computers with small screens, etc.)

>117 AndreasJ:: It's getting around because people have experience of other sites making the immobile* version worse in the name of improving mobile.

Hear, hear. I work at a UK copyright library with a sight fewer than 10m items on the catalogue, compared to LT's 135m books spread over 12.8m unique works held (or is 22.7m total unique works the better comparator?). LT's catalogue search is by far the quicker at returning results and, presumably based on members' tags, is also far better at sorting by relevancy. And that's using the salmon version on a PC. And that's the performance I'd hate to lose.

>125 Cynfelyn: LT's catalogue search is by far the quicker at returning results...

Do you mean site search? Catalogue search would be searching your own library, and I doubt you have millions of books cataloged yourself.

>120 lorannen:
Ah, I see! Thanks, lorannen! While my cursor was in the search box on the My Books page, I pressed the help button. That brought me to a wiki page about my books. There was a highlighted link on that page for search, so I pressed that. It took me to a page about search, but there was nothing on the page about operators.

Since receiving your helpful reply I have been experimenting, trying to discover how I could find the wiki page you referenced, but from within the search function. The help button never got me there, but I learned that there were search tips within the Title/authors button that did show that wiki page. That’s not where I expected to find help, so I had never looked there.

Thanks again!

>124 gilroy: I agree re. better Common Knowledge examples.

It's interesting that for so many people a light gray background would be easier on their eyes. For me higher contrast in colors is easier, so black-on-white is my favorite. (Although ever since I got anti-glare glasses, computer use has been so much easier on the eyes.)

>126 jjwilson61:: Do you mean site search?

Yes, "Search site". So, of course LT's not just searching the bibliographical side, but also the social, local and 'Other' sides of LT.

Hi Tim,

To answer your initial questions:

- Why did friends of mine abandon LT or decide not to use LT?

The answers I always received are
1) "too complex" and "adding books is non-intuitive".
2) long loading times
They are now either not cataloging their books or using GoodReads.

- What do I find myself using and am pleased by?

boardgamegeek, but that's generally considered clunky, last-century and overly complex, so it's probably me not caring too much for interfaces.
On the other hand, for a bunch of simple tasks, I use the third party android app to interface with BGG.
I also often use the LT app, but only for adding books, rating books or toggling collections.

- What did I find myself using most initially?

Add books, your books, having fun with various types of recommendations and the quirky stats. I'd say the interface should focus even more on those elements, keeping other functionality available but perhaps a little more out of sight. YMMV

- What do I dislike the most?

Talk. It's not a core functionality but it's non-intuitive. When people post in the wrong groups on a daily basis, it's not the people, but it's the design.
A simpler way to add a little bit of formatting for those not knowing html could also be useful.

HTH

>130 igorken:

What do you mean by 'long loading times'? Generally I find LT pretty responsive for nearly everything I do.

>131 andyl: Well, not my own opinion, but it's feedback I've gotten a few times. In my experience loading a single work page at times can be very slow (usually it isn't though), but pages like recommendations and connections always take a while to load (though I personally rarely use them).

>130 igorken: I think the ability to get to all kinds of quirky stats is one of the strong points of LT compared to other options (for people for whom the sheer power of the organizing potential isn't the main draw) and making them more prominent, easier to get to, easier to share, and shinier would probably be a great way to get new types of users without fundamentally changing the site!

(It's also a great motivator - to me at least - for making my catalog data complete and accurate. Would I have ever gotten around to checking book widths if I wasn't trying to beat out the Statue of Liberty? Unlikely.)

>123 timspalding: How about an easter egg page featuring the Sacred Salmon? (Beacon Hill joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Cod)

Please keep the feature that Talk is next to unusable on a small screen: the app does everything I really need when I’m travelling (mostly checking whether I already own this book before I buy another copy). Talk is great, but it’s a terrible time-sink, I really don’t need the temptation to dive into it when I’m away from home :-)

>131 andyl: Sometimes response is fast, but other times very slow.

The tag combination list is always very slow.
http://www.librarything.com/tags_combinations.php

>135 thorold:. I could not have said it better. Smart phones are to make sure I don't buy duplicates!

>132 igorken:

Loading my Recommendations page from my Home took 800ms
Clicking on a work that was recommended took approx 1500ms - although I have seen it go up to over 2000ms through clicking on works from my catalogue (but generally we are talking about 1.8 secions to load and 2.1 seconds to finish)

I have not seen anything that takes significantly longer than that (unless there are server problems) - and tbh I don't think that there is all that much fat to be trimmed from those numbers. Although having looked at the html I notice that there is no defer or async on the script tags which could make a small improvement.

I have seen the Connections fail to return data - or at least in a timeframe I am willing to wait. It might be possible that could be rewritten so that the fetch has a timeout and a failure message in those cases. At least it would result in a known state rather than leave the user hanging looking at a blank page not knowing what is going on.

>136 MarthaJeanne:

Yep tag combinations page can be a bit slower - but then I wouldn't expect a brand new user to be in that page much. It is more the kind of place someone who has already decided that LT is their home would be found.

Also looking at that page it seems that it is the actual generation of the data which seems to take the time.

>135 thorold: I'll second that. I also find myself checking if I've reviewed a book I come across somewhere. If not and it's very cheap I'll consider buying it, reading it in the bus, writing a review and ditching the extra copy (maybe even both copies)). I find myself switching between the app and a mobile firefox or chrome showing either LT or TinyCat.

I'll try to answer >27 timspalding:

I have very few apps I use frequently. The one I use the most is from the supermarket chain I use. It presents me with new offers (that I very seldom use) and can also be used for paying and scanning. It even allows me to bypass the normal checkout queue. And if I'm stuck on a train on a rainy day, I can browse articles from the monthly magazine they produce. They are basically trying to offer me everything I can get at the store and then some. They also offer a very simple game once in a while. (Very simple as in "Move the mouse a bit", not "Pride Celebration Treasure Hunt" :-)

So I'm thinking that maybe a feature like "Do I have this book?" would be useful. Currently I have to search for it and/or try to add it which is not really what I want to do. Using the camera on the mobile would be a great help.

Maybe also a "remember this book" or put this on a "wish list" (which I probably don't want to be a part of my LT catalogue).

Some of the UX in adding a book with a self-scanned cover is currently a pain. So I think you should consider some usecases and see how smooth they could possibly get. (You don't need to implement them unless it is easy. Just see if it is possible to make them smarter) Taking a picture of a book cover and having the LT app tidy it up and use it for a cover picture might also be nice?

>140 bnielsen: The app already lets you take a picture of a book cover and tidy it up! At least in Android, just click the little "camera" icon under the (probably blank) book cover image.

The tidying is limited - I would love a little bit of color correction too, and the ability to set the proportions of the corrected cover instead of having the tool guess, and 'snap to corners' for the crop would be amazing - but it's still a lot easier than the alternative.

>141 melannen: Thanks. Most of the time I buy a paperback for next to nothing in a second-hand shop and enter it on LT while I'm on the bus home. At home I'll finish the details and even scan the cover. Anything that speeds up that process would be nice. But I don't want a bad cover photo, so the App has to be almost as good as my flatbed scanner. Hmm, I can see the problem with aspect ratio, snap to corners, exact size, etc.

>91 norabelle414: Whoa. I'd forgotten about that list...

>142 bnielsen: Probably 90% of the time, the built-in crop-and-unskew function works fine, but if the photo is extra skewed or the book is an unusual shape, it sometimes changes the proportion enough to look wrong.

I doubt you'll get anything as good as a flatbed scanner from a phone camera unless you take the photo so carefully you might as well be using the scanner anyway, though. I decided a while back that if I waited until I could get a perfect one from the scanner, I'd never get around to it, so I was already using a camera (For whole batches at a time) and doing crop-and-skew in GIMP. But I mostly use them as thumbnails for finding the books on the shelves anyway, and only for books that don't have my cover up in any format at all yet. And the app is more than good enough for that, other than the proportion problem.

>143 gilroy: I vaguely remembered the thread (it took me quite awhile to track down) but I had forgotten that you so neatly summed up everything that had been discussed. Thanks again for that work!

>98 melannen: The basements of creepy antique malls in once-abandoned factories off deserted highways in the Alleghenies
This sounds like such an awesome place to shop...

>140 bnielsen: I agree that there should be at least a toggle to choose whether "Wish List" should be included in "Your Catalog". I would use it a lot more if I could keep it separate.

>147 krazy4katz: Yes. I keep it as just a list of author/titles on a wiki page:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/User:Bnielsen/WishList#B.C3.B8ger
which suits me fine since most of the time I don't really care which edition I get.

My suggestions seem petty after reading through this thread but I have two and they are cosmetic.

1) I never cared for the brown/tan motif.

2) I would like to force the view of things when I link outside of LT. If I send a link of my library, for example, I want the viewer to see it how I want them to see it. Like only cover images, not the list of my books as it seems to default to.

Just my $0.02

mfigroid (149):

I would like to force the view of things when I link outside of LT. If I send a link of my library, for example, I want the viewer to see it how I want them to see it. Like only cover images, not the list of my books as it seems to default to.

You can provide a link to the view of your choice using the permalink available at the bottom of your catalog page:

https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=mfigroid&offset=0&shelf=sh...

What you cannot do, by design, is prevent people from choosing a different view and viewing your library in the method of their choice.

>138 andyl:

Loading times are okay, but vary and we have slow spots. I don't see major change here, but we are looking to massively pair back the JavaScript and CSS, and that might help a little. Also, we're going to be more intentional about page layout, which can be a factor.

>144 melannen: A little off-topic but I'll address the cover capture from the LTApp...
The built-in cover capture on the LTApp is pretty good but the results are dependent on lighting the most (and if you can get the cover flat enough). When we were building the app I used my comic book collection as a test bed. So every book in that account has a custom cover captured through the LTApp. None of them scanned.

https://www.librarycat.org/lib/conceptComics

If you have a phone released within the last 4 years you should be able to get good results if you take the pic using natural light in a shaded area (like a covered porch or similar). You can get good results using indoor lighting but it's harder—as with all photography in general. Once you get the hang of using the corner editor to correct keystoning the results can be pretty good.

Just so you know, I really like a soft, dark blue. Just saying.

Adding my 2 cents to PLEASE, please a thousand times - fix or change the wording of the Add to your library / green check mark.

Before you even think about changing other things, please make this basic function 'work' as one would expect.

(And add me to the list of users who NEVER realized that Help link in the top nav is contextual, not a general Help section).

My number one issue hands down is seeing the dimensions of covers in the module where you get suggestions for newly uploaded covers. Now I have to click through to the cover page and then back again, waiting for the covers to reload, to see whether the suggested cover is an improvement over the current one or not.

Just don't make it look like Goodreads. LibraryThing is my favorite web site EVER - and I love the way it looks. There is something a bit old-fashioned and enduring about it.

Please give us the option of including our Wish List in our catalogue or not. I hate clicking on a book and see that it is in my catalogue, so I think I have it, just to find that it is on my Wish List!

Also, can you put some kind of search feature, that when you scan a book with your phone, or TinyCat, it will show whether you have it in your library or not and if you do, pull up the entry so you can see the categories, tags, etc. I go to a lot of book sales, and when searching books to determine if I need to buy it or not, it gets tiresome to have to type in every book.

seanmac11:

Please give us the option of including our Wish List in our catalogue or not. I hate clicking on a book and see that it is in my catalogue, so I think I have it, just to find that it is on my Wish List!

You can choose to put wishlisted books in Your Library or not, choose which collections to view or search, and have collection(s) as a column in your viewing style - there are many ways to tell.

>158 lorax:

That's true, but: when I am out and about at book sales, I want to know not only whether I currently own a book, but whether I have read it but don't own it and whether I have previously owned it but have deaccessioned it. (Those don't overlap, because the former includes library books.)

That means I have to search at least three collections using the app, which can be a pain. If I could say, "Search all collections except X" then I could exclude Wishlist. But I can't. It's one of the reasons I prefer not to use Wishlist.

lilithcat (#158):

That means I have to search at least three collections using the app, which can be a pain.

Oh, it didn't even occur to me that this was referring to the app! Sorry.

Oh! One more! What about in the Name That Book Group, if it could be broken down by genre? I like to try to help people find books, but reading through 30 pages of books that are in genres that I don't read, just to find a couple in the genres I do read can be a pain. This would probably increase the number of titles that are actually found, as people are more likely to look through a smaller number of posts, if they are at least in the same category as what they read.

>161 seanmac11: That's an excellent idea! I might even go back to that group and participate.

>160 lorax: Oh, it didn't even occur to me that this was referring to the app! Sorry.

Well this *is* a thread about a redesign of the site, not the app, I think you can be forgiven.

Not sure which thread this was mentioned in but the one about Local Members and how it sorts. I have tried to use this page and it is too chaotic for me. If it could be sorted by location instead of random/most active, I might find it more helpful. As it is, I just had to scroll through looking for my small town. So annoying, I gave up. Also, just a listing of names and locations would suffice for me.

>164 perennialreader: Probably a big reason there hasn't been a lot of complaints about the avatars there. Since there is no order to the page it's not very useful and so nobody spends time there.

It at least tells me that there are other LT members in Vienna, but there is no way to figure out who I might enjoy meeting short of looking up each profile.

Late to the game.

I like a nonthreatening interface that hints at the power below the core. Something with ONE FRONTEND TO RULE THEM ALL (e.g., a responsive layout) such that if my screen width is phone-ish, I get the same powerful features, just formatted to fit a smaller screen. I understand that it's not easy to reflow, but have you looked a libraries like Zurb Foundation (https://foundation.zurb.com)? They make responsive stuff dead simple (and, IMHO, it's leaps and bounds better than Bootstrap).

I think stepping up to a more modern UI paradigm might be in order, and maybe switching to SVG-based icons (akin to, or possibly using FontAwesome (https://fontawesome.com/)).

Definitely be sure to consult the a11y project from time to time to identify healthy accessibility patterns: https://a11yproject.com/ (if that's what you meant by accessibility). And don't forget about the structured data: (https://schema.org/).

The website I use the most, and am most pleased with the layout is https://whatcharacter.com, but I hope I'm pleased with it, because I designed it. :3 (the backend, though, is the stuff Lovecraft might write about; and I'm one to talk about responsive: my menubar looks like hot garbage on a phone... I'll eventually fix it when I'm done with an agnostic modular n-tier framework I'm currently working on).

From a general design point of view, maybe have a similar top-bar: Home, Your Books (maybe merge in Add books), Groups (maybe merge in Talk), Local, More (merge in Zeitgeist), Tiny Cat. Then when you click those, there's a left vertical menu that can be pushed offscreen/hidden (and maybe it can also be a hover-over when you put your cursor on the top bar). And if you use icons, you could hide the text on smaller screens.

The screen would have three main sections: left gutter, main content, right gutter. They would continue to have the same/similar content that they currently do, but would be reflowable/hidable in the responsive view.

The main content would feature "widgets", some hard-coded and some user-settable/placeable/etc. These could be resized to a grid, so some could take up part of the available width, while others could take up the entire width. You could even have templates, like something that looks like "LT Classic", for people who like to pretend that Y2K is still looming over the horizon.

>164 perennialreader: an >165 MarthaJeanne: And it randomly chooses the next state over from me, just because I live near the border. So I don't actually see members in my own community, though I know several from the local Talk group.

>167 2wonderY: That page is an abomination. Probably looked good on paper. :-)

>166 aethercowboy:

Much of what you're saying, we plan to do. Ceteris paribus.

FontAwesome

We are probably moving to Fontawesome plus custom stuff. The day of multi-colored fam-fam silk icons is over, alas.

I think the lack of wishlist separation has done a lot of harm to LT. I know I'm not the only one who keeps my wishlist on Amazon instead, and that means LT is losing out on a lot of data, especially about new and future releases. So I pretty much never browse for books on LT, because by the time LT knows enough about a book for it to appear in recommendation lists etc., I've probably already heard of it.

>170 _Zoe_: That is something we are aware of and are considering.

>171 conceptDawg: Wow, I'm excited to hear that everything seems to be on the table with this new redesign!

_Zoe_ (#172):

Whereas I'm relieved that not everything is on the table - we aren't going to lose the tabular view of the catalog, or any data fields or data sources!

>173 lorax: I meant in terms of additions—Tim has already said that they won't take away anything except the title field ;)

>166 aethercowboy: Yep. Almost all of what you mention is in the plans for the new version. While bootstrap has been mentioned we will likely only use a finite portion of whatever framework we decide on—like the forms and buttons. The rest is going to be more custom but also responsive. Remember that LT is so antiquated because it IS an antique.

While we updated the visible skin in 2013 it’s still the same markup underneath from 2006ish. The core is in desperate need of a cleaning and overhaul. It’s going to be good in many ways.

>173 lorax: I’m not aware of any features that we are dropping at this point. Certainly no data features.

It’s more about removing the speed bumps in usability processes on LT. Making everything easier to use and more consistent.

Yeah, yeah, I know! I'm saying that is a relief to me. When people say "everything is on the table" I find that terrifying, and was saying as much - that it's the fact that *not* everything is on the table now that's a relief to me.

Hello, it's the first time I'm writing here. I'm french, please excuse me if I make mistakes.
What I wish in LibraryThing is :
1st : a very easy to use help about how and where to record datas : I must follow the links from page to page about how to record pseudonyms... and never find, and the differences between series and publisher series ( these are only 2 examples )
2nd : a separate line for publisher series numbering to make bibliographical research about a series or a publisher,...

( I'm not a librarian but someone trying to build a bibliographical database of old french popular literature : I work actually with a software called Bookcat : the help is easier and the database is more complete)

I wish to use LibraryThing to record my "Books about Books" collection with computer and find it on my iOs App.

I hope not to be too newbie

Wow, I'm excited to hear that everything seems to be on the table with this new redesign!

Hardly everything.

I'd like to keep the title field. I use it for some books.

>180 anglemark: I don’t usually agree, but I’m with you on this.

First off, thanks for asking our opinions.
I use LT to catalogue my books, so a few thoughts on that, but I'm also a member of the "fine press" group of groups, which would probably include the Easton Press, Folio Society, Fine Press and, most importantly for me, the George Macy group. We fixate on various editions of the same book, by different presses, and really like photos, particularly of illustrations or book designs.
Sooo...
For cataloguing, I'd love more error-tolerant typing. When I do a Google search and have a typo, Google recommends what it thinks I'm trying to type. With LT, I just get an error. I realize such flexibility may be way beyond the capabilities of LT's database, but thought I'd ask anyway. One very narrow request - when I add a book and am adding it to a collection, I don't know how to set the default for all of my collections. I'd like that to be My Library, but instead the dropdown seems to get stuck on the last collection I used. So some easy way to set the default and perhaps order the collections, e.g., My Library, then Fine Press, and then Specific Fine Press, so sub-collections within collections.

As for our fine press groups - I'm going to post something there and get more input, but in general, make it easier to add images and to customize certain pages or link to outside pages. Fine press editions are notable for the quality of their bindings, their title pages, their paper quality and their illustrations, so to really show off what a fine work a book is may require 8-10 images. Right now, the process is sufficiently difficult that many of us just post the photos on Google or Flikr and then add a link in LT. But seems to me if LT is about books, then it's worth finding a way to show off the most beautiful editions of books ever produced. So give me an easy way to upload multiple images to a book page, which should represent one edition of a book. In an ideal world, then give me a way to compare and contrast multiple editions of the same work, so a wonderful leather-bound 1800 edition of Don Quixote plus the Folio/Macy/OtherFinePress editions. OK, I can dream - give me something like a Wikipedia page, where knowledgeable folks can group-source the content. That might not be that hard to do - you could ask groups to form a committee to oversee the editing. I'm imagining author's pages and publisher's pages and pages on specific presses as well as individual books.

Also, allow groups to add custom fields to their pages. The George Macy group collects fine press books published from the mid-1930s to the early 2000s by the Limited Editions Club and the Heritage Press. But the Easton Press bought the rights to re-publish the Limited Editions books, so the same illustrations may appear in all three press's works, maybe 750 different books in 2,500 different. For various reasons, some of the books were re-published later with different introductions or illustrators or covers, so keeping track of all of that can be difficult. I ended up creating a spreadsheet outside of LT for that purpose because I couldn't figure out any way of doing so within LT. Now I periodically publish a comment to remind folks that the spreadsheet exists, since I can't figure out any way to attach it to the group chat page (assume the moderator approves).

Chat/talk. The comments in our group and in some similar groups are fascinating and very valuable in terms of learning about the books we collect. But there is no easy way to collate the comments into something more permanent. I actually went through the past 6-7 years of comments by members of the group and copied them to a Word document in hopes of perhaps combining them into something more usable, but it is a huge amount of work. Here's what I'm talking about. A group member will mention that they recently purchased a given book. Someone else will congratulate them adding that they particularly love the illustrator of that book. Someone else will argue that another book was a better example of that illustrator's best work. Another comment will point out the wonderful book design or printing and someone else will weigh in comparing this book with another edition by another fine press. Over the course of 6-7 years, the expert info posted is amazing, but there is no easy way to go through it. In my perfect world, I could set up a wiki where individual books and illustrators would be listed and the group could contribute to the content, edited by a team of moderators.

I know much of this is no the basic-level stuff you are focusing on now, but I don't know enough about coding to determine where any part of it woudl need to be dealt with at a basic level.

Here's a link to that spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104iYrlXLQOyHMHdS0ulKei_wv71yEAeE9LQvvSgK...

Many thanks for listening.

>182 SteveJohnson: you can already create wiki pages atm to collate such information.

URL format: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/User:USERNAME

Since ponies seem to be on the table, I'd like the sorting of reviews decoupled between the profile reviews page and work pages. I typically want to see the former in chronological order and the latter in descending number of thumbs.

I think this would also improve intuitiveness - before I figured out they were coupled, I was regularly confused why the sorting of reviews had "spontanteously reset".

>182 SteveJohnson: For cataloguing, I'd love more error-tolerant typing. When I do a Google search and have a typo, Google recommends what it thinks I'm trying to type. With LT, I just get an error.

I confess to a certain apprehension when hearing suggestions like this. Rather too many times I've stared in disbelief at a google search results page before grokking that my search terms have been "helpfully corrected".

Yes. The other day on LT I tried to type heterogeneous and ended up with heterosexual. Good thing I notice. Really changes the meaning.

>184 AndreasJ: Since ponies seem to be on the table

Delicious!
https://metro.co.uk/2017/09/18/dartmoor-ponies-served-up-as-burgers-at-farmers-m...

I'm late to this thread and still a relatively new user, so consider what you will, but here are some thoughts/requests:
* It would be great to expand the APIs (or pre-programmed widget options). I use LibraryThing for personal use, but I also have my own blog and wanted to have a list of my most recently read books. None of the pre-programmed options did that, and I eventually was able to hack something together using the APIs (and my very modest, rusty programming skills), but I was disappointed in that (1) when queries are pulled from the database, you can only sort on a few options, it would be nicer to sort on any variable if possible (I had to pull out all the books in the library and then sort based on date-read manually in order to get an accurate list), and (2) not all the data that LibraryThing tracks was available - for example, I'd also love to have nice trackers on information such as how many books I've read each year, how many pages I've read each year, how many books with various genres/tags/etc. I've read each year and the like, how many items are physical books and how many are audiobooks I listened to, and so on. All the information is stored in LibraryThing (something I really like compared to other sites), but it's not easy to pull it back out in whatever format we'd like. I recognize that a lot of the site population may not want to do their own programming, but if people could access it and were willing to share widgets and the like they created, it would promote LibraryThing externally if people were to come across it more on other websites. It would also be nice to make more use of all that information in my catalog.
* In terms of a more modern look, consider having a bit more white space (and more dynamic options). While I like the feature-packed nature, I've spoken to others who felt a little cluttered/overwhelmed. I wouldn't do away with any features, but perhaps it's possible to create cleaner initial pages with a bit less information and yet still plenty of opportunity for those who are interested to see/access all the features with a few clicks. Also, having ability to control/customize the display a little more might help. So someone who only wants to track 5 things about a book could set up the edit book interface to cover just their items, rather than scrolling through information they don't want to track, while someone else who really likes having complete information on everything would be able to see the full details in one place.
* I've found myself entering new books by ISBN because when I search by title, I often have trouble getting the results/edition I want (and it's also sometimes hard to tell from the initial search results if it is showing me a hardcover/paperback/ebook/etc. That may not matter to everyone, but I like the fact that we are storing so much information about the books in my library, but then I want to be sure it's accurate. I don't have an easy fix for that, but perhaps the search results could at least show a bit more detailed information so I know which item to select if I only search by a book's name.

Thank you for asking our opinions.
I am primarily a reader (rather than a collector), but had kept a list of books that I had read since 1981 and about ten years ago used LT to catalogue all those books and have added books as I read subsequently. What first drew me to the site was the ability to see in one place the book covers of the books that I had read and sort the books electronically by tags, authors etc, as my curiosity took me.
I continue to use LT due to the groups, specifically Folio Society Devotees, as the level of discussion of edition, but also the books themselves, is better for me than Goodreads, which I have also started using.
Yesterday I started cataloguing my daughter’s books before she starts taking them from her childhood bedroom to her new home.

Okay, background over, as >182 SteveJohnson: articulates clearly, I now fixate on various editions of the same book, by different presses, and really like photos, particularly of illustrations or book designs. So for cataloguing, I'd love more error-tolerant typing, an ability to see more than ten editions to a view when adding, an ability to sort by type of book (hardback etc) and as others have said, an ability to copy another users details of a specific edition into a new book record for me. Once in my virtual library, the ability to see multiple photos of a single edition (cover, artwork, advertising flyers for the edition etc) would greatly enhance my experience.
The ability to easily add photos to group discussions would also improve usability.

Having started to catalogue my daughter’s books yesterday, the ease of using the bar code scanner and ISBN to add new books compared to when I started ten years ago makes cataloguing a joy, with a little bit of effort required to locate the correct cover occasionally. For pre-ISBN books, the issue with editions discussed above exist. Once books have been added, the ability to group tag etc selected books (by clicking or tapping) does not exist (or I have not found), and this would be increase the usability significantly.

Where LT could emulate Goodreads is in the presentation of books read in the year, but this is minor compared to the enjoyment of being able to see the covers of 50 or 100 specifically tagged books in my library at once.
Having said the above, most of my use comes from the text intensive groups.

Finally, as others have said and you have confirmed, keep all the details, which is what I mainly want/use, and thanks for asking for our comments.

>189 CarltonC:
the ability to group tag etc selected books (by clicking or tapping) does not exist (or I have not found)

On your catalogue page, the lightning bolt button activates the power edit, where you can change information (including tags) for many items at once. Click it again to switch off power edit.

Android app for Talk LibraryThing.

Having a Dark Mode is increasingly popular (not sure if it'll satisfy the Salmon Mode group though).

Please may I ask for a small design tweak to the user's Stats/Memes page, e.g. https://www.librarything.com/profile/Cynfelyn/stats/library ?

Dates 1970-1979, 1980-1989 etc. always jars. Please could we have 1971-1980, 1981-1990 etc., please?

Is a few color schemes a complex thing code-wise? I'd love a dark mode and perhaps some other light ones

Since ponies seem to be on the table

They kinda aren't. Redesign is not RE-CREATION. At the same time, it's often hard for users to understand what is easy and what is hard, and what is connected to design and what isn't. So I suppose keep the ponies up; some aren't ponies.

more error-tolerant typing

This is a harder problem than may be thought. But I hear you.

Is a few color schemes a complex thing code-wise? I'd love a dark mode and perhaps some other light ones

@conceptdawg wants a night mode. I'm worried it would become quite a boondoggle.

>190 Petroglyph: Thanks for reminding me about the lightning bolt button. I had not previously used, but had known and forgotten its use!

>195 timspalding:: conceptdawg wants a night mode.

I use f.lux, https://justgetflux.com, or does conceptdawg have something else in mind?

>152 conceptDawg: Sorry this is late, I went offline for a week.

The main real issue I have with the built-in cover capture is that on some covers (especially oddly-proportioned ones), using the unskew/crop will sometimes noticeably mess up the proportions - i.e., a long and narrow book will end up much closer to a standard paperback proportion. And sometimes, say, a hardcover book will end up closer to paperback in proportions. That's always going to happen with that kind of tool, the problem is in LT there's no way to fix it.

Since 90% of what I use covers for is a quick visual guide when looking for a book on the shelf, seeing what looks like a paperback when it's actually long and narrow, or whatever, can really mess me up.

There's not going to be a perfect fix for this because you'll always be working on a tiny phone screen, but among things I have dreamed about that would improve it are: option to pull dimensions from the book entry and use those for the cover proportions; option to crop without skew, so at least it will be obvious the proportions are off; ability to stretch/squash the unskewed image (which wouldn't be exact, but would at least let me fix the obviously wrong ones). Or since probably 90% of books entered are one of a dozen or so standard sizes, maybe a dropdown with standard modern formats, and a "none of the above" option to let you enter weird dimensions (this would also be really great for the 'dimensions' catalog field). Any one of those would fix it.

It looks like you didn't have that issue too badly with the comics covers? Although even then, looking at the crawl in that link, it looks like some of them came out skinnier than others, and they probably should all be the same width. But Silver Age comics are all a standard format, and differences in proportion probably aren't something you're paying much attention to (as opposed to my comics shelf, where the difference between .7 (modern tankobon) and .67 ('90s manga) puts it on an entirely different part of the shelving.)

Many excellent points raised here; a few agreements / additional points:

- I raised this on the work page discussion, but I would really like to see extra weight given to 'original publication date', promoting it from merely 'Common Knowledge'. Extra functions in 'edit your book' and 'your books' would cover it. As with the people who would like more options for recording specific details about multiple editions, I would love the capacity to build my book info around OPD rather than edition. I know this is against the prevailing LT philosophy but I can't be the only one, surely?? :)

- agree with comments on the deadly 'green plus'. A link to a basic pre-populated page would be helpful and, I think, encouraging for newbies.

- the capacity to eliminate covers that are not covers would be excellent. (Perhaps an awareness campaign to push for the elimination of fuzzy ones might be possible?)

- the capacity to separate your wishlist from your catalogue would result in much better data. I cop to being a wishlist abuser; this would stop if you could easily generate two separate data sets. (However for various purposes I would also like the capacity to merge / separate them.)

- an overhaul of the help / wiki pages is really needed, perhaps as suggested with brief pop-ups to make sure of what the question is in the first place, and a new tab function to make sure you can easily get back to where you were.

- I would also push for a simplified glossary: when LT terminology still has the ability to confuse long-term users, you can imagine how bewildering it must be to potential new users. When you're struggling to grasp the whole book / work / edition thing, trying to understand (for example) how Common Knowledge works and who it impacts is impossible.

- agree that there should be simplified / more welcoming introduction pages that direct newbies to where they actually want to go instead of potentially leaving them wandering the labyrinth.

Speaking of Original Publication Date, I'd love for it to return to the top of work pages.

Completely agree with every single point >199 lyzard: made. I personally don't give a hoot about the publication date of an edition, but care very much about the original publication date of the work. And covers drive me crazy. I'm closing in on 3000 cover flag votes and I doubt a single one of those covers have been removed.

PawsforThought (#201):

I'm closing in on 3000 cover flag votes and I doubt a single one of those covers have been removed.

"Not applicable to this book" flags are not intended to result in removal. I think the idea was at one point that they wouldn't be used as the default cover for an ISBN, but that was the extent of it. Only spam covers were ever eligible for removal.

>202 lorax: Nothing seems to happen no matter what you flag something as. And why shouldn't something flagged as "not applicable to this book" be removed? If it's not a cover for that book it shouldn't be among the covers for that book. End of.

PawsforThought (#203):

And why shouldn't something flagged as "not applicable to this book" be removed? If it's not a cover for that book it shouldn't be among the covers for that book.

Because user data is sacred; if someone chooses to upload, say, a photo of their cat as a placeholder in lieu of using a generic cover, that's their business, and we don't get to prevent them from using it.


End of.


Sorry to have bothered you, then, I won't attempt to clarify in the future.

>204 lorax: But then that should be something other than a cover. "Members' photos", which you can put on whatever work you like, or something, but not a cover and not something that's in the way for all the other LTers trying to find an actual cover for a book. The cover section of LT is a horrifying jungle to navigate, with tons on spam pics, pics so blurry you can't make out if it *is* a cover of that book, and multiple copies of the same cover in what feels like 5 million different resolutions. And you might have to scroll through them all to find the right one for *you*. That's not a good user experience. Getting rid of the ones that aren't covers shouldn't be considered bad thing.

And you misunderstood my use of "End of". It was to make a point about covers, not about you explaining.

>204 lorax: I agree that if someone chooses to use a photo of their cat as a book cover they should be allowed to do so for the book in their catalog. What I would like to see happen, though, is the "not applicable to this book" flag result in that cover not being offered to other users after reaching a threshold number of flags. Similarly with blurry or poor-quality images — if someone is happy to have that on their own book, I'm more than okay with that. But please don't clutter up the grid of Member Covers with them if they've been flagged (this would require a different kind of flag, I realize, and in the case of either flag the usual provision should be made for counter-flagging to avoid misuse of the feature).

Well said Rosalita. That's how I'd like it to work, too.

RE: the covers issue: I think I suggested this awhile back on a covers thread, but I feel like a lot of the issues with covers could be fixed with an overhaul of "default covers". We could have the addition of some new default covers that turn up a lot (say, a Project Gutenberg or Generic Ebook one or a Wishlist one or whatever), which ought to be pretty easy - the default covers selection hasn't changed in a very, very long time, and it could use a redo in general.

But I'd also really love the ability for users to define their own limited set of default covers, which show as an option for them on every book, and don't show as an option for anyone else. That way if someone wanted their cat for every cover, they could do it without annoying anyone else.

Really, in general, it seems like a toggle for "this cover is only shown on the book it was uploaded for" (like >206 rosalita: posted while I was working on this) - both as an option for the user, and a consequence of flags - would be a good thing to have.

I'm not sure about an image quality flag, though - if a blurry cover is the only scan of my exact edition, I want to be able to use that one - a lot of people only ever see the covers as thumbnails anyway.

Great ideas all around. Status quo needs an overhaul, desperately.

>208 melannen: if a blurry cover is the only scan of my exact edition, I want to be able to use that one

What if the blurry ones were hidden by default after a certain number of flags, but there was an link at the bottom of the list of member covers for "Show All" or something similar, that would then show you covers that were flagged as blurry/lower-quality but NOT the covers flagged as not appropriate?

rosalita:

What I would like to see happen, though, is the "not applicable to this book" flag result in that cover not being offered to other users after reaching a threshold number of flags.

Absolutely, I'd like that too! I may even have submitted an RSI to that effect many years ago. But that's a far cry from drawing a line in the sand and saying they need to be removed, period, no disagreement will be listened to.

Similarly with blurry or poor-quality images — if someone is happy to have that on their own book, I'm more than okay with that. But please don't clutter up the grid of Member Covers with them if they've been flagged (this would require a different kind of flag, I realize

I've long since given up hope on anything involving suggesting that any user-created data is of anything other than the highest imaginable quality. (Search for "ratty data flag" if you want to relive that particular horror. It's amazing how strongly people felt about not wanting anyone to suggest any data at all was even slightly imperfect.)

>206 rosalita: Thank you for expressing that so well. That's pretty much exactly what I would like to see.

>210 rosalita: That would be fine? But it seems like it's pretty much already the behavior: all images classed as "high quality" sort to the beginning, and all of them but the first 10-15 are under a "show all".

I would be 100% in favor of lobbying to raise the threshold for "high quality" - 200x200px was pretty good ten years ago when that sort was put into place and that would cover a quarter of your screen, not so much now. And the ability to flag for "not high quality" if an image is large but still crappy, in order to make it fall to the bottom of the sort, might be nice. (Honestly, "mark it low quality, have it fall to the bottom of the sort" seems like a pretty good compromise for the "wrong book" flags, too.)

Does it really bother people that much that low-quality images are *ever* visible *at all*? Or is it that people are reading the smaller "high quality" images as crappy and so don't realize it's already sorted?

Currently the two possible cases are: there are lots of covers, low quality images are hidden under the "show more"; there very few covers, so a couple low quality ones at the end don't interfere with finding the others. As a person who prefers high quality, but mostly just wants a thumbnail, and doesn't have the capability to do my own high-quality scans most of the time, it seems like a pretty good system already.

It would be super cool to be able to custom sort covers, though - maybe by size, date uploaded, number of uses, and flagged-ness? (..or even some neat graphics hack that lets you sort by average color value or sth...) I don't actually know what the current sort is, other than the "quality" filter.

This discussion on covers is very interesting! I've had so many problems with covers disappearing, being changed, wrong ones suddenly appearing that one of my rules is 'every book added gets scanned' so the uploaded cover is OURS - warts and all - and remains with it. Still have 300+ covers to scan and upload to fix up the problems.

>213 melannen: Does it really bother people that much that low-quality images are *ever* visible *at all*?

Speaking just for myself, when it's most irritating is when a book has a gazillion member-uploaded covers, which makes paging through beyond tedious. And as you say, there are an awful lot of covers that are marked as "high quality"by the system that I do not consider to be high quality at all. I've never really known what qualifies for the HQ tag, but what you wrote about smaller covers helps solve some of that mystery, and I'd agree that perhaps some new parameters for the HQ marker are needed. And your suggestion of custom sorts by the sorts of data points you mentioned could serve my goals just as well, as I do have a minimum size below which I'm not willing to go, regardless of how sharp the image might be.

>214 VicRML: Covers disappearing or changing is almost always (if not actually always) due to using an Amazon cover. When Amazon changes the cover on their site for a particular ISBN, it changes on LibraryThing, too. But if you choose a member-uploaded cover, even if it's not one you've scanned yourself, I don't believe you'll ever see it disappear or change without warning. If I'm wrong about that, someone will let us both know but that's my understanding. So making sure you select from the member-uploaded covers section when there is one that matches your edition, and supplementing with your own scans when needed, should serve you well and avoid those unpleasant surprises.

>214 VicRML:

Re: changing covers behind your back

As >215 rosalita: said, that is due to Amazon changing their cover for that particular edition/ISBN. Avoiding that is easy: click on the amazon cover you have, right-click, choose "copy image address" (or "copy image location", or whatever your browser calls it) and paste it in the "grab one from the web field". That way you have the exact same cover as the original amazon edition, only it counts as member-uploaded and won't ever be changed on you again.

>215 rosalita: Yeah, I'm pretty sure the threshhold for being marked "high quality" is "at least one of the dimensions is greater than 200 pixels". Which was reasonable when it was coded, eight or ten years ago, and when there were a lot fewer covers to pick from! Not so much now.

Bumping it up to even 600 or 800 pixels would make a lot of sense and should be pretty easy.

>216 Petroglyph: Thank you for taking the time to make that suggestion, Petroglyph. That had been one of my workarounds.

But we have so many unusual and out of print books, it's much easier for us to have the routine that every book gets scanned. Otherwise I'd be forever telling each person doing cataloguing what to do with each book!

I have two suggestions that come immediately to mind (though one I posted to its own thread before I saw this one).

1) From Where: I primarily use the "From where" field to keep track of where my digital media is (even though Amazon and Disney have both so thoroughly monopolized and integrated digital distro, sometimes I do accidentally manage to buy from somewhere that doesn't show up in my libraries there). I also have a handful of books that I have both a print/eBook version and the audiobook. I prefer not to catalog them as separate books and instead tag them "have audio & ebook", "have audio & book", etc. However, this means that, where both formats are digital-only, I have to just use the Free Text field (e.g. "Audible & Kindle") instead of being able to use the existing venues like I have on my other digital media. While admittedly it doesn't make any practical difference, I was wondering if one day it might be possible to put multiple venues in the "From where" field?

2) Identifiers: I'd like to be able to edit the Identifiers fields that are currently greyed-out (EAN, UPC, ASIN, LCCN, OCLC). Though I'm not entirely clear on how they affect things on the back end and if there's something going on there that makes it better that I can't edit them; if that's the case, I do wonder why are they in my "Edit your book" page in the first place.

>219 alexa_d: I suspect that they are there so that you know that they are in your record.

>220 MarthaJeanne: Which makes my inability to correct their absence all the more frustrating.

I was reminded of this discussion: https://www.librarything.com/topic/258836

Nobody in that discussion objected in principle to the MARC summaries being imported, just to where they were being imported to. This might be a good time to find a good place for them.

On the edit book page, the drop-down selector next to the title field, which denotes the character on which the title is sorted alphabetically, has no label. More than one person has posted in Talk asking what this field is and what it does. It would be good to label it as part of the redesign.

>223 konallis: The sticking point in the past has always been to find an intuitive name for it. If you stick a label on it that no one understands you're still going to get just as many questions. Do you have any suggestions?

>224 jjwilson61: It would have to be something descriptive (and long), like 'Sort alphabetically by character {input} places from left' (or right). Which would probably necessitate moving the field on to a separate line.

>224 jjwilson61: Honestly I think a non-intuitive name would still be better than no label at all. Then at least people could ask "What does sort from mean?" instead of "What is this little box beside the title field?"

>223 konallis: I think I had to ask about that number also. It would help if it was addressed on the help page for edit your book. At least enterprising members could find it on their own without having to ask. :)

>227 perennialreader: Go to an edit your book page. Click on the help at the lower right. Right under the explanation of the title field you will see:

Sort From The drop-down to the right of the title field indicates the character position at which to sort. (For example, "The Cooks" would have a 5 in this dropdown.)

The last edit was 25 August, 2018. If people realized which help link was specific to the page they are on, they could find it.

>228 MarthaJeanne: and others: In that case, "Sort From" is probably the best title for that drop down menu.

Perhaps a sentence at the top of the page that says "For all questions about categories, see "help" at the bottom of the page."

k4k

>228 MarthaJeanne: Thanks but I know what the number is for now, but not when I first started.

I have 3 help places on edit my book page. Top right, bottom of the page (help/FAQ), and I have never noticed the one lower right at the bottom of the edit your book section as far away from the sort button as it can get.

I will have been on LT for 10 years tomorrow and never noticed that help button, imagine someone brand new trying to find which help to click on. No wonder they ask...

>230 perennialreader: Agreed. I never see the help buttons.

>230 perennialreader: You said at >227 perennialreader: "It would help if it was addressed on the help page for edit your book." I was pointing out that it is addressed there if you know how to find that page.

Again we see that the specific help for a page needs to be more obvious.

I'd never noticed that one either!

The Help at the top right of every page is context sensitive, and when editing a book it takes you to https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Work/Edit
Of course, that's a different page to the one you get to from the Help link at the bottom right: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Editing_your_books

The top one takes me to https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Main_Page. It might be because I use the old version.

The page you list doesn't mention the sort field. Maybe time to add it, as we have had it since 2014. In fact, the whole page needs a major overhaul as there are a lot of mistakes in it.

Why are there even two? We should change one of the pages so it just directs people to go to the other, then make sure that one is correct, complete, and up-to-date.

>230 perennialreader: Happy Thingaversary!

In some parts of the LT universe (The Green Dragon comes to mind) the proper way to celebrate a Thingaversary is with books and cheese.

>236 Cynfelyn: Thanks! I usually have books and cheese every day so it fits right in.

I woke up to a message from Tim that I have my 10 badge. So thanks Tim!

>224 jjwilson61: et seq.

"Initial character sort"

>238 Crypto-Willobie: And how do you know how to proceed after the initial character sorting? ;)

Some more suggestions: "Sorting position"; "Sorting character"

>237 perennialreader: Happy 10th Thingaversary!

>236 Cynfelyn: Books & cheese are indeed a fine way to celebrate. :o)

>240 clamairy: Thanks!!

One thing I'd like (and I probably just don't know how to do it) is to see my book titles and covers when I check a series, for the books I have in my library.

It bugs me to see "silly" titles - for example 'Title, book X in series X' right in the title field, when that information is available in other fields and should never be included in there -, or different covers.

>242 ScarletBea: see my book titles and covers when I check a series

Yep, that would be nice. Probably more of a functionality change rather than just UI.

>242 ScarletBea: So the primary change you'd ask for is that your covers show on the series page.
Depending on the source used to input data, the Title, Book X in Series X is something you can edit on your copy so you don't see it. I do all the time.

>244 gilroy: Oh, in my copy I always adjust the titles and other items, but when I go to the series page, what I see is, I assume, the way that the work was originally set up.

Check the book I'm currently reading, Wyntertide, and its series (this one is ok for covers)

>245 ScarletBea: Someone set a Canonical Title to strip out the extraneous data. Also a solution.

I'l say one thing I'd really like to change. PLEASE, OH, PLEASE, stop giving out accounts for free. They seem only to be used for:

Authors who want to hype their (nearly always self-published) book.
People who want help in finding a book.
Spammers by the zillions (although there are far fewer than there used to be, and thank you, Sir Spalding and Crew for that).

If there were even a nominal fee, rather than just a gift, it would really help.

>247 Lyndatrue: While those you name use the free accounts, so do people who want to try LT before committing to cataloguing their entire library. If we want new members, having the original membership for free is essential.

Yes, I'm afraid I have to agree with >248 MarthaJeanne:.
If I'd had to pay to start using LT right from the beginning, I never would have tried it out.

Of course, soon I was buying a lifetime membership ;)

This is a thread that seems to have gone quiet, but I'd really like to see more effort go into the Works/Combinations/Editions area. A very large fraction of my library is books from the pre-ISBN era. And often exist in very diverse editions -- e.g. Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. This was originally published in ten volumes, now is usually republished in five, once was published in three, exists in various abridged editions, and was recently republished in a new, rearranged format. Getting it's too easy to get all these things confused. It would be nice if the system for defining relations were clearer.

For instance, I have a Greek edition of half of Herodotus. After many tries, I managed to hook it to what seems to be the closest edition, but I'm not sure. And it's hard to sort out, because I also have an English-language translation of The Histories, and they keep wanting to become combined. And don't even get me started on the Iliad, for which I have one compete Greek, one partial Greek, and about a dozen English editions. Similarly with Chaucer and Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Well, I don't have those in Greek, but in Middle English, but you get the point. :-)

Also, many of my books are obscure enough that mine is the only copy, or one of only one or two, and the information already in LibraryThing is wrong -- e.g. there is a typo in the title. Finding other editions of the book is hard, combining is harder. Often I'll try to add a book and find no hint of it in the "Add Books" page. So I search LibraryThing, and someone has it, and I use the command to add that book to my library -- and back I go to the Add Books page, and it once again says the book doesn't exist! If one uses that "Add Book to My Library" command, it really shouldn't just copy the title or whatever from the Search page; it should ADD THAT BOOK!

Another thing that really bugs me is all these Illustrated Junior Classics and Retellings and Abridged Editions of classic works, with people constantly uploading covers for these things to the covers page for the real book. I don't have a suggestion here, but I'd really like to see a way to let people know that "Robinson Crusoe for Three Year Olds" is not Robinson Crusoe!

On which topic, is there any way we can discourage people from uploading their own scans of book covers when that very cover is already on file?

Oh well, enough gripes. I'm another who bought a lifetime membership pretty early in my LibraryThing career, and even bought lifetime memberships for my parents (who don't use them), so LT must be doing something right. I just wish it could figure out the interesting parts of my library, as opposed to the stuff everyone else is reading. :-)

You know what could really use an overhaul? Quick Links. Right now, they're not very consistent in how well they work, even given the various already-stated levels of integration. And in some cases they're kind of redundant, such as having separate Amazon and Kindle links. That said, if the Kindle links were instead updated to reflect whether a book was available on Kindle Unlimited (or comiXology Unlimited, for graphic novels), that would be a big help. Likewise, even though Audible and Comixology are Amazon companies and their availability is shown on their Amazon pages, they also still have their own dedicated websites that it would be nice to have a direct link to. As of right now, Audible's Quick Link only goes to the Audible.com homepage instead of even a basic title search. Same goes for Project Gutenberg and LibriVox.

Of course, that's not even getting into how much clean-up the user-added Quick Links need, but to start with, we need a better system to get rid of spam/duplicate links than "change the category to 'zDELETE ME' and hope for the best".

>250 waltzmn: On which topic, is there any way we can discourage people from uploading their own scans of book covers when that very cover is already on file?

Why should that be discouraged?

Full disclosure: I sometimes do it, when the existing versions of that cover are bad, or where my copy is distinctly damaged or similar. I'm sorry if this annoys people, but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to stop unless Tim tells me it's against the rules or something.

>252 AndreasJ: I agree, but it would be nice if we could get that feature Tim has talked about before, where the same basic cover art/designs could be lumped together in some way and people could better find if their cover has already been uploaded in cases where there's already hundreds of unique designs.

>250 waltzmn: and >252 AndreasJ: The issue with covers (particularly with multiple, often very low res or otherwise "bad" uploads) has been brought up in this thread before. I am one of the people who get annoyed by the multiple "bad" copies and would like a system where one could at least choose not to see them - my idea was to have an auto-filter which corrals all similar covers into one group with the highest-res one being the one shown, and then you could pick which resolution you wanted.
Another suggestion (which I personally really liked, and I believe several others were also in favour) was for it to be possible to make the image "uploader only" - meaning that the person who uploaded it can use it for their cover but it won't be included in the list of covers.

I'd also love to be able to toggle language editions on the cover page, because having to scroll through ALL THE COVERS when you're looking for a cover in a fairly small language (Swedish, in my case), it actual hell.

> 252 AndreasJToday, 2:24pm

> >250 waltzmn: waltzmn: On which topic, is there any way we can discourage people from uploading their own scans of book covers when that very cover is already on file?

> Why should that be discouraged?

When, as you say, the existing version of the cover is bad, there is every reason to upload a better one. I've no objection at all to that.

But let's take presumably the extreme example, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. As of this moment (22:21 GMT July 31, 2019), there are 657 member-uploaded covers of this book. (And 1651 reviews, as if anyone needs more reviews of Harry Potter books, but anyway....) Of those 657 covers, two of the top three are the same image, and dozens more are also of that cover. Now suppose someone comes along, and wants to find their particular cover, which isn't that one. Which, perhaps, is one that uses the proper title, not "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I had to scroll through several hundred covers to find the particular one that I imported from Britain. This took a LONG time, because there are all those duplicates of the same cover in there.

Don't get me wrong; I'm listed as having uploaded 2,137 covers (!). But I only upload covers for books that don't have my particular cover, or a defective copy of that cover, or that have no covers available at all. I'm not saying custom covers should be discouraged. For my library, with thousands of obscure books, it's an incredibly helpful feature. But we don't need dozens of blurry smartphone photos of the same cover over and over again!

I'd vote for PawsforThought's idea:

Another suggestion (which I personally really liked, and I believe several others were also in favour) was for it to be possible to make the image "uploader only" - meaning that the person who uploaded it can use it for their cover but it won't be included in the list of covers.

>250 waltzmn: >254 PawsforThought: et al.
I upload scans of most my covers, coffee ring stains and all. Why that should be penalized I don't know. Yes, it's a terrible pain to go through all those covers. And it's a self-perpetuating pain because many a time I gave up looking for the one that matched my book and just scanned it. It happened often enough that I gave up and started to scan everything.

>255 waltzmn:

Of those 657 covers, two of the top three are the same image

The covers may have the same image, but the covers are not the same. The coloration is different, but, more importantly, the third has a red box saying "Scholastic"; the first does not. The second and fourth have the same image, but different text.

What lilithcat says. Images may be "the same" but are rarely identical, and it's precisely the differences that let one have choice. I like being able to choose (when possible) the one not just with the high resolution but best lighting, condition of the cover, or state similar to mine (a few times, for example with a recent upload of the Folio Society Golden Ass, someone had already uploaded the image of the cover with exactly the same sort of sun damage or rubbing) etc. Not to mention the subtle differences in fonts, blurbs etc. that would get lost if everything were lumped just on the basis of "same image".

Not being able to access what we can access now would be terrible.

For those who find scrolling through the covers a chore, consider googling with title, last name, publisher (and or date of your edition) and uploading the result yourself. It's mere seconds. If the book you are entering has too many cover images on LT for your busy schedule, i.e. it's a widely held book, then chances are it will have the cover you are looking for already somewhere on the net.

>255 waltzmn: Regarding images generally, as well as >250 waltzmn: mentioning many repeated uploads of the same cover:
~ perhaps a very unwelcome comment… but isn’t it time that LT modernised the whole approach to hosting photos?

Compared to other websites (e.g. goodreads) LT is out-of-sync with state of art design for websites by allowing unrestricted numbers of member photos on the profile page and gallery(s), and there are no restrictions to constrain image size. There must be literally gigabytes devoted to storing photos that any other website would be charging for.

I’d like to see LT streamline the entire website so the Talk threads would load faster and scrolling through members profile pages be more dynamic if the ability to upload images was restricted to small thumbnails and a size-ceiling imposed on total MB for every member. I would especially endorse having stationary images only, because trying to read a Talk thread with an animated gif flickering is very like trying to hold a conversation with the muted TV playing in the room!

We have access to a 'junk drawer’ for temporarily adding photos that can be used in Talk threads. I wonder why these images remain, when they become stale and the conversation is months if not years old? LibraryThing is a book website, not a photo website or a cloud storage, no?

Just saying…

I like the idea of "uploader only" cover images. I expect that very very few other users are interested in say my cover for The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, which I uploaded because the other versions of that cover lacks the big piece of yellow tape on my copy, frex.

(Other users would, naturally, still see it if they view my book specifically, and could snag it from there if they really wanted to.)

>258 LolaWalser: No, it doesn't always "take mere seconds" to google and image and upload it to LT. Sometimes you get terrible google results and have to spend closer to half and hour trying to find the cover you're looking for.

Why would it be a problem for anyone if the cover images were corralled a bit more than they are today. None of the images would actually be removed, but the ones that are *essentially the same* would be corralled into a group where the highest res/best/most use/whatever would be the one shown and when you click on that (or click "show more" or something) you get to see the rest of them. Personally, I think that would work well for everyone - people who don't want to see a million covers that don't apply to them don't have to, and people who want every cover available still will. Add to that the possibility of narrowing it down via language and it's much easier to find the cover you're after (even for English language books, because you'd filter out all the non-English books if you wanted to).

#2 is the most important point to me. I love how much freedom the users have to edit their libraries and add all sorts of informations about their books. With a clearer menu design/navigation it would be almost perfect. It feels too nested and intricate to get to the options you are searching for.
I have no problem with the general look of the site.

Grouping the same covers is very much needed and would probably in itself discourage a number of uploads. People often upload literally the same image as the existing one, presumably because scrolling through hundreds is simply too time consuming and it's much easier to simply upload. I'm talking about publisher covers, not personal scans. Most Folio editions have dozens of the same publisher covers uploaded. If the change cover page had one image per distinctive cover, which you could then open to choose one among the images grouped there, it would be infinitely easier to navigate and it would entice people to use existing images if there is one of adequate quality and likeness

>263 SandraArdnas: Exactly.

>263 SandraArdnas: Brilliantly explained design, thanks!

>3 lilithcat: I'm all for improving how the site works on phones and tablets. But I have seen too many sites do that in such a way that they become difficult, if not impossible, for computer users.

What lilithcat said...

>261 PawsforThought:

"Sometimes" whatever--I speak from experience of uploading dozens and often hundreds of books monthly--MOST of which don't have covers in this database. If you're spending half an hour googling a cover that simultaneously you claim is found in "millions" of copies on LT then you don't know how to google. Absolutely no cover that can be found here in "millions" is going to be absent from the top of returned searches on Google Image.

Besides, the covers are already "corralled" under the line breaks, both for user-uploaded and Amazon covers--you have to click to "see more". If people who are entering books with "millions" of available cover images weren't finding what they need above the line break, this "problem" would have been moaned about much earlier.

Which tells me it's a "problem" for a small minority.

>267 LolaWalser: I never said that the exact same image takes half an hour to google but exists in millions of copies on LT. I've never used the term "millions" in this thread.
Please read what I actually wrote.
And no, the covers are not corralled, they're just hidden from immediate view. That doesn't help me if I'm looking for a particular image that isn't one of the images above the line break. If "my" image is further down I'll have to scroll through tons of images that might looks similar to mine but isn't quite the same, or be completely different cover. If the images were *actually* corralled into groups (like >263 SandraArdnas: explained very well) it'd be much easier *for everyone* to find the images they're looking for.
Just because you don't have a problem finding images doesn't mean that only a "small minority" have an issue with it, or that they're incompetent.

>267 LolaWalser: Quite obviously, no one has problems with works with no or few covers uploaded. There's nothing to group or coral there. However, take a look at a work with thousands of images and it should be obvious that the existing Amazon/user division and pushing the lowest res ones to the bottom is not enough. It's certainly not a problem just for a small minority because I distinctly remember Tim playing with some ideas how to make grouping work and posting a thread about it.

>268 PawsforThought:

I do often run into problems with finding covers and having to make my own images because I upload mostly books that are "rare" on LT (and sometimes wider). Which is precisely why I appreciate having multiple choices offered, when that happens. But that's also how I've honed Google Image skills. It's not 100% return, but if I get nothing with it, then there's nothing on LT either (which is usually something I already know).

Having to spend thirty minutes googling for an image that is supposedly so common as to be present among "millions" on LT is totally incompetent. And please don't play word games with me--your "corralling" IS precisely "hiding images from sight".

No one is the arbiter of what makes an image "the same" for anyone else. I distrust utterly the idea that someone who finds scrolling too onerous would know how best to sort images for my needs.

Last night I uploaded a book*, a Penguin paperback, that even with the "same" image comes in at least four shades from green to grey. Then there are the different fonts used--with the same image, similar colour. Then there are the two different designs--same layout, same design, but a different black-and-white photo used! Then there are the versions with a short and a long cover blurb.

How many times would your "corralling" force me to click until I hit on my cover, the one with the correct colour AND fonts, AND blurbs, AND the photo, AND resolution etc.? Because these are all points of difference of "the same" cover! And so for EVERY book?! Intolerable.

Obviously I don't care if the "corralled" view is optional. But I absolutely don't want my type of library to be a victim of the popular ones. Any implementation would have to treat books/covers present in small numbers differently from those present in large numbers. A cutoff of a thousand or more.

*All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

>270 LolaWalser: Again. I've never talked about "millions" of images. Not once. I was talking about having to google for an image because the LT cover page is a completely mishmash that it makes it difficult to find the correct image. Especially if you're looking for a cover in a language other than English.

One click would open up the "box" is similar looking covers. And then you click on the one that looks like your cover. So two clicks, which is exactly the same as if you need to open up the "show all XX covers" link. It's not as difficult as you're making it out to be.
Why would "your type of library" suffer in any way? No one is removing images, just making the cover page easier to navigate.

Regarding user-uploaded covers:

Having clearly touched a nerve, it would seem that there is a problem here that cannot be solved with just one solution. Evidently some people want to see dozens of effectively identical covers, for reasons that escaped me. (Frankly, I had assumed that people wanted to upload their own covers to burnish their profiles by getting credit for uploading covers.) Personally, I just want to find a cover that is RECOGNIZABLY the same as the copy I have; I don't care if it is exactly identical -- my goal is just to glance at the LibraryThing cover so I can more easily recognize the book on my over-crowded shelves. This perhaps argues for a preference: Some people can view groups of effectively identical covers, so they can scan through them quickly; others could choose to view EVERY cover.

This leads to another suggestion, with regard to reviews. The feed of "Reviews for your books" is cluttered with reviews of J. K. Rowling and Homer and William Shakespeare and the like. There are hundreds of reviews of these books -- thousands, in the case of Rowling. I really don't need another review of Great Expectations that says little more than "I liked this book even though it's old." My personal policy, for writing reviews, is to 1) Only review books that have not been reviewed to death, and 2) Write a thoughtful, detailed review that describes the book, the target audience, and what is useful and/or inaccurate about it. I write these reviews because, frankly, they're the only reviews that I find it useful to read!

So this raises two suggestions. One is a "Does this book need a review" rating. Just some sort of a graphic that tells potential reviewers whether there is a real point to what they're doing. One suggestion might be to multiply the number of reviews by the length of existing reviews. The higher the number, the less the need. This does not stop people from writing reviews of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets or The Hobbit, but it tells them that, with 825 and 957 reviews, respectively, there is really no point -- there are plenty of reviews out there, and one more will be lost in the crowd. Whereas a book with only one or two reviews could probably use a few good reviews, and one with no reviews at all is certainly due.

Which leads to the second suggestion: A preference on "Reviews for Your Books" that lets one suppress all those excess reviews -- e.g. I'd like to be able to suppress all additional reviews that are less than fifteen words, no matter what the book, and all reviews for books that have been reviewed more than fifty times, no matter what the length. No review of less than fifteen words is going to do me any good, and any book that has been reviewed fifty times is probably something I'm going to hate anyway. :-)

This leads to yet another suggestion, about LibraryThing Early Reviewers. This is for some sort of an Expertise mechanism. In the last batch of early review books, there was a Kevin Crossley-Holland book about British folktales. Well, I happen to have published four books on the study of folklore, and have hundreds of books on the subject in my library; I also maintain an internationally-known folk song index. In other words, I am qualified to review this book. Similarly Peggy Seeger's autobiography First Time Ever. I requested both books at the time they came out and didn't get either. I have won a large number of books, but usually ones about which I am not expert. Really, it would be much better if the Reviewers system allowed people with genuine knowledge of the topic to be moved up the priority list. I realize that there is the potential for abuse here -- but, dang it, I want the expert reviews, not the "Gee I'll take it because I want more books" reviews!

And I'm sure that's too many suggestions for one day :-), so I'll stop and let others gripe in turn. :-)

>272 waltzmn: has posed some redesign ideas, from his point of view.

I want to comment on just one point: the expertise of reviewing.

1) Did Robert intend the restricted-reviews proposition for all the book reviews, including our own on the 'Your Books' page?

I like writing my own reviews and having these as a reference to remind myself what I thought about the book. My reviews do not précis the story, but rather mention its execution and more importantly, what aspects would compel me to re-read the book. Obviously, this reflects a very personal taste. Then I like to read many of the other LT reviews, often scrolling through to the 3 or less stars, because it is always educational to see why a reader didn't like the book.

2) Early Reviewers from all walks of life are completely legitimate participants.

Would an author (or more to the point, a publisher) want only experts' reviews? How is that going to sell the inventory? Wouldn't such a move smack of judgmental elitism?

I would strongly object to restricting any member from writing reviews, however it suits them. That's one of the most attractive aspects of LibraryThing: it is a multi-cultural, diverse community

>273 SandyAMcPherson: It seems clear to me waltzmn was referring to options for his/her own feed, not restricting reviews people post as such. Sort of like in the 'member uploaded covers' module, where you can restrict those that show up for you by resolution

>274 SandraArdnas: OK.
That wasn't clear to me. Especially since there were those comments about LibraryThing Early Reviewers and 'some sort of an Expertise mechanism'.

I have been uselessly lobbying for a filter for reviews for years. It won't happen. I'd love to filter for what waltzmn described as well as eliminating by user, but it's pretty much hopeless to ask. I've given up.

There are elements in the ER algorithm that check whether or not you have entered similar books. But if you ask for several books you are likely to get the least requested book rather than the one that fits you best but many more people want. How recently you won a book also plays a part. If you would rather win the ones you are an expert in, you would do better not to request the others.

When it comes to length of reviews, the short ones don't bother me, as I can quickly move on. It's a lot faster to read and move on from a short review than to scroll down through a long review that I don't read at all. If there are length filters, I'd rather not see the ones that are over 250 words. I'm not looking for a long critique of the book, but rather for a quick way of figuring out whether or not I want to read the book. For that "Yuck! They didn't warn me about all the blood!" is better than paragraphs of insightful criticism.

Writing a review is first of all for me, so that I know a year from now what I thought of the book. I may add in elements that I think might interest others, but I don't write primarily for that purpose.

273SandyAMcPherson wrote:

1) Did Robert intend the restricted-reviews proposition for all the book reviews, including our own on the 'Your Books' page?

Note that I never proposed restricting reviews. I proposed two things, neither of which is a restriction on a user's freedom to write reviews: (1) I proposed a mechanism for reminding people whether a book needed a review or not; (2) I proposed a mechanism by which people are less likely to see reviews which aren't likely to help them.

The point about personal reviews is valid, although the Private Comment mechanism strikes me as a better way to do this if you want a review for yourself.

Please understand what my goal is here: It's not to suppress. It's to let people see useful things. I'd like my reviews feed to show me substantial reviews of books that don't get reviewed often. The mass of short reviews of popular books makes it harder.

If it could even be configures only to show me reviews of non-fiction, I'd be a lot happier. I hope that is part of the disagreement here; I'm concerned almost entirely with non-fiction.

2) Early Reviewers from all walks of life are completely legitimate participants.

Would an author (or more to the point, a publisher) want only experts' reviews? How is that going to sell the inventory? Wouldn't such a move smack of judgmental elitism?

I think we are writing about two different things here. Again, I'm concerned mostly about non-fiction. Speaking as an author of non-fiction, do I want expert reviews? Yer dern tootin' I do! How the bleep are the non-expert readers supposed to know that the book knows what it is talking about without expert reviews?

A proper review of a non-fiction work will do more than just say "I liked this" (or didn't like it). It will point out what the book brings to the field that is new (if anything). It will help us understand who will profit from the book. It will tell where there is room for additional analysis. It will also tell us which parts are uncertain, or which go against the scholarly consensus. A good expert review of a non-fiction book will help the non-expert read the book!

I am not saying that "people from all walks of life" are illegitimate as reviewers. If a non-fiction book is so dense as to be unreadable, the scholars may have to pretend to understand it :-), so the ordinary people are the ones who will be able to say that the emperor has no clothes! The point is the reverse: It's to promote diversity of readership. In the case of the Peggy Seeger book that I mentioned, the people who got copies and reviewed it were mostly people who did not know her music or her history. In that particular case, by giving review copies only to those people, I think anyone who reads the reviews will get less insight than having both expert and non-expert reviews. The point is that experts are relatively few; to achieve balance, one needs to seek them out, not rely on random drawings.

Very little of this, I concede, applies to fiction. (Although, even in fiction, it's much more useful to say, "This will appeal to fans of X than Y" than to say "I like this.")

For most areas of nonfiction there are magazines and journals that assign reviews on the basis of expertise. Those are available to those who want them, and can be entered on LT as published reviews. ER is designed to reach interested lay people. They are good at saying whether or not an interested reader will be able to follow the book, whether it keeps a reader's interest. Whether the illustrations are helpful or not. 'I really wanted to enjoy this book, but...' is the start of a useful review.

277MarthaJeanne wrote:

There are elements in the ER algorithm that check whether or not you have entered similar books. But if you ask for several books you are likely to get the least requested book rather than the one that fits you best but many more people want. How recently you won a book also plays a part. If you would rather win the ones you are an expert in, you would do better not to request the others.

I'm aware of all this, and generally do not request more than one book per month for that very reason -- and, at times, have prioritized a book where I am expert over one which I think I would rather read. :-) And I don't request books unless I have a significant interest.

(I strongly doubt that LibraryThing has a clue as to whether I have "similar" books; most of my books are too obscure. This can be demonstrated mathematically using the "similar libraries" feature. If you look at the person whose library is most like mine, and look at that person's list of people whose libraries are most like his -- I'm about tenth on his list! And a very large fraction of my books are so old or so obscure that they don't have a LoC classification to use to rate similarity.)

But the inclusion of how recently one has won is a genuine problem if one is trying to use the algorithm with skill. Let me give an actual example. A month or two ago, I requested a book about Leonardo da Vinci -- on whom I am not expert, but the blurb implied that it had material about dating paintings and manuscripts based on the chemicals used, and I know a significant amount about that. So I requested the book. (And got it, assuming it ever shows up.)

Now, this month, the Crossley-Holland book on folklore shows up -- a book for which I am expert on the whole subject. Clearly, I should have requested the Crossley-Holland book and not the da Vinci book. But I could not know that in advance.

The only way for me to know whether I should request something or not is to know which books are coming in future. Possibly this might be a feature that LibraryThing could implement.

279MarthaJeanne wrote:

For most areas of nonfiction there are magazines and journals that assign reviews on the basis of expertise.

Fewer than you think, when you get to, say, textual criticism or ethnomusicology (the areas in which I am most expert). There is no journal at all devoted to the former, and the latter field has too many sub-disciplines. One of the biggest problems I have in my work is that it is impossible to find out whether some extremely expensive book that I've never heard of is any good or not, because there are no reviews. It's one reason why I often review extremely obscure books, such as ones where I have the only copy on LibraryThing: Because I've found no reviews elsewhere.

But Early Reviewers doesn't get academic books. Once again referring to the Crossley-Holland book, it is not an academic book; it's a retelling of folktales. Does this mean that people shouldn't care how much the stories are retold, or for that matter whether they are actually folktales? Doesn't seem so to me. It's something I'd want to know before buying it!

>280 waltzmn: But the inclusion of how recently one has won is a genuine problem if one is trying to use the algorithm with skill.
I don't think the creators of the algorithm intend for anyone to be able to use it with skill, only for it to generate fair results.

If there was any advantage to be had by you declining to request the da Vinci book, which I doubt there was, it would be incredibly small.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect LibraryThing to gather lists of books from publishers that might be available for review sometime in the future. They put enough work into this function which generates no income except maybe the occasional new paid user.

I would welcome any design change that encourages me to revisit my collection.

For example, I have been asking for quite a while that we add a way to identify which authors listed in On This Day are in my collection. When I recognize one, I always go back to the list of the author's works to determine which I have and which I might want to add.

Regarding “Reviews of your books”, I find it limitedly useful - they’re my books, so evidently I’ve already decided they’re worth getting. But it occurs to me that for people who keep a LT wish list it might be highly useful to be able to filter it by collection.

>272 waltzmn: Evidently some people want to see dozens of effectively identical covers, for reasons that escaped me.

I think people want to be able to upload their own cover, warts and all, and they saw your proposal as trying to restrict them from doing that. As for grouping similar covers, I think that would be a formidable exercise in image processing and I'm not sure LT has any experts in that area. Or were proposing a system where users would classify covers? That would also be a fair amount of work to set up.

>259 SandyAMcPherson:

trying to read a Talk thread with an animated gif flickering

Criminy! Where do you see those? Must be a group I don't read.

>272 waltzmn:

Evidently some people want to see dozens of effectively identical covers, for reasons that escaped me.

Because "effectively identical" and "identical" are not the same thing. If the cover of my edition of the book doesn't say "Scholastic", I don't want the cover on my shelf to say that, even if it is otherwise the same.

(Frankly, I had assumed that people wanted to upload their own covers to burnish their profiles by getting credit for uploading covers.)

I don't know why you'd think that. Frankly, I think most people don't give a hoot about that. Has it occurred to you that people might want an image of their actual book? I like seeing that my ancient paperback cost 75¢, rather than the $12.95 that's on another cover with the same art work. That's why I've scanned the covers of a lot of my books and uploaded those.

Personally, I just want to find a cover that is RECOGNIZABLY the same as the copy I have; I don't care if it is exactly identical.

Well, that's you. Others feel differently.

>286 lilithcat: I have LT friends there and don't want to antagonize them, so I shall just leave the comment as "It happens"...
After all, members can upload anything they so please (within the limits of LT's Terms of Service).

And if something really annoys me, I just use my AdBlock extension to 'block element'.
I don't save my browser history, though, so the gif is back again if I've had to restart my computer (a common occurrence in this land of high winds).

Regarding grouping covers, if such a thing were to be implemented, it wouldn't affect those who always scan their books in any way and I'm not even sure why it's perceived as such. It would merely reorganize the way uploaded images are presented.

My idea was to group all those considered the same, meaning the same image, same fonts in the same places and the like, so that the initial 'change/choose your cover page' actually shows only different covers of the same work. Those who'd rather use an existing cover than upload one would then simply click on the one corresponding to their edition, which would open all those grouped there. Those who always upload their own scans shouldn't care one way or another because they do not use it at all.

>289 SandraArdnas:

waltzmn explicitly wanted to discourage submitting near-identical variants of cover images.

As someone who only scans and uploads if no existing image fulfils my personal criteria for “identical enough”, I’d actively like if covers were grouped along your proposal. That said, it may be nontrivial to implement and both developer and server resources may be better employed elsewhere.

waltzmn (#272):

Reviews on LT are, first and foremost, for the benefit of the reviewer. If you or I or anyone else finds benefit in them, that's a nice bonus, but if someone wants to write the 1,654th review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, that's their own decision, not one for LT to discourage just because they don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said.

any book that has been reviewed fifty times is probably something I'm going to hate anyway. :-)


Like The Odyssey, reviewed 328 times, which you hate so much that you have it in five different translations? Or The Iliad, with a mere 285 reviews? Or perhaps it's Shakespeare you can't stand, despite having rated the Riverside Complete Works five stars for something that's reviewed 128 times?

I know it's fashionable to pretend that only the most obscure of the most obscure works have any merit, but really, popularity and quality are largely orthogonal. Now, if you wanted to suggest that anything with that many reviews is sufficiently well-known that you don't need reviews to help you form an opinion, I'd be more sympathetic.

291lorax wrote:

Reviews on LT are, first and foremost, for the benefit of the reviewer.

I will freely admit to having twice been wrong in this thread: Once about why people upload near-duplicate covers and once about reasons why people write reviews. But this statement cannot be correct, or else there would be no Early Reviewers program. No publisher is going to give away a book and ask you to read it and write a review for yourself! The publishers want people to write reviews s as to encourage other people to read the book.

What has come out of this is that there are (at least) two classes of people who use covers: one who want to find their approximate cover and one who want to show their exact copy. Similarly, there are (at least) two classes of people who are interested in reviews: one group whose members want to remember their own books and one who want to learn about books they haven't read. There is surely no Great Moral Reason why LT cannot accommodate both. There may be technical reasons, especially as regards covers. The other suggestion, about filtering reviews, should not be technically difficult (since all the data is already there) and would be a nice service LT could probably offer at little cost. Now that I have seen that there are "constituencies" for the present way, I am not trying to take it away. But I would ask for some support for those of us who are different.

The rest of this is a cranky response to a cranky comment, so people may not wish to continue:

(my comment): any book that has been reviewed fifty times is probably something I'm going to hate anyway. :-)

(the reply): Like The Odyssey, reviewed 328 times, which you hate so much that you have it in five different translations? Or The Iliad, with a mere 285 reviews? Or perhaps it's Shakespeare you can't stand, despite having rated the Riverside Complete Works five stars for something that's reviewed 128 times?

I know it's fashionable to pretend that only the most obscure of the most obscure works have any merit, but really, popularity and quality are largely orthogonal. Now, if you wanted to suggest that anything with that many reviews is sufficiently well-known that you don't need reviews to help you form an opinion, I'd be more sympathetic.

First, I would ask if you know what a smiley is.

Nonetheless, my statement is mostly true. Consider: I was the first person on LT to own four of the last six books I entered, and the other two have only seven and nine other owners. Clearly other people don't tend to like what I like. :-) I wish they did; we'd get more of my sorts of books published! :-)

Yes, there are popular works that I like, and popularity and quality are not inversely correlated. But who is the second most popular author on LibraryThing? (And so, presumably, the second most reviewed, although I don't know that.) Stephen King. I intensely dislike horror -- life is scary enough; who wants more scary things? I could go down the list of popular authors and offer similar arguments; while there are popular authors that I like, most of them I dislike. In general, and with exceptions, something that is popular is not likely to be something I enjoy. That's not a virtue, but it is a difference. Which is something we should be celebrating! (Says the person who is not neurotypical. :-)

In the course of this thread, I have learned things about the ways people use LibraryThing that are quite unlike mine. These did not occur to me, because they just aren't the way I do things. I freely admit that I was wrong about how people use LT. Now that I know that people use it in another way, I have no objection to their way. But in the interest of diversity, I would ask you to also be open to the way I do things.

(As an incidental footnote, being the oddball that I am, I have always enjoyed the Iliad more than the Odyssey. :-)

>292 waltzmn: Note that a very small proportion of reviews on LT are written for ER and MG. When I have written reviews for ER I have written them differently than for other books. But that is only 1-2% of the reviews I have written.

>292 waltzmn:

Reviews on LT are, first and foremost, for the benefit of the reviewer . . . this statement cannot be correct, or else there would be no Early Reviewers program

Not so. The fact that some reviews are written for the benefit of the publisher/other readers does not negate the fact that that is not the primary reason most reviews are written.

We had reviews on LT long before we had the ER program.

Not sure if this is the place to post this, I'm not good at these kind of things.

When I enter a new work, under the Media category, Cassette is no longer listed under Sound Recording, but there are two Cassettes under Audiobook.

Sorry I'm anal about things like that, can this be fixed?
Thanks.

>295 hredwards:

Click 'Show Complete List' and you will see it on the list.

Thanks.

I'm not reading have not read through the thread to find out what other people have suggested. A couple of things that occur to me are:

- I would like to be able to change the priority of the ticks that come up when you look at a series list. When I'm in a bookshop, I need to know which books I already have, but if I've also borrowed a book from the library, I think the tick will be blue (read but unowned) instead of green (your library). But is it possible to make the priority customisable, because some people prefer it the way it is and others might prefer a different order?

- I've created several wiki pages for one thing or another but if I don't remember to create a link to them, they get lost. Maybe there's something there already that I don't know about, but otherwise, could a link be automatically generated in a creator's profile page?

>298 humouress:
Re: wiki pages. This link will take you to the wiki pages that are on your watchlist (click "view and edit watchlist" to see a complete list). By default, any page you create ends up on your watchlist.

Alternatively, you can click on your Contributions in the left-hand menu and see all the pages you've contributed to. If you've only ever created pages for your own use, you'll find a complete list there, too.

I agree, though, that an auto-generated list of "Pages you've created" would be handy.

>299 Petroglyph: Ah; thank you! But where do I find these links (without coming back to your message)?

>300 humouress:
I don't think there is a link anywhere to your personal wiki pages, except on the LT wiki itself, in the left sidebar. The wiki main page itself is kinda hidden: More > Helpers (in sidebar), and then under HelpThing. (Or: More >Projects (in sidebar) > Librarything Culture.)

I recommend creating a handy link yourself. I've put mine in my LT notepad, which I've placed on my homepage. I suppose you could create a link on your profile, too, depending on how visible to others you want that link to be.

If you want it hidden on your profile try sending yourself a private message.

Thanks. I've created links - when I've remembered in time.

Um ... there's an LT notepad? But I digress.

>303 humouress: 'Your notepad' module. I believe it's originally in Home>About you, but you can move it to your dashboard. Useful to keep all sort of links within LT that are difficult to find by going through regular menus

You can get to the Wiki from the Help link at the top right of every page. From there, just click your username in the left column to get to your page.

I’ve just started cataloging my library on LT again. This question may have been addressed in the 305 previous comments but I haven’t made it through all of them yet.

Could a field be added to add a value to each book? It would be a value I assigned myself based on condition etc. it would be very valuable for insurance purposes - especially with a very large library. Right now I’ve been using another field that I don’t currently use but it’s awkward. Being a new user I’m hoping there’s a way to currently do this that I just haven’t discovered. If so, please enlighten me. If book value is not a current possibility then here is my suggestion/request to add it. Thanks.

Hi >306 deb6-11: Welcome to LT! Some people have suggested using private comments for the value of a book. Would that work for you? The idea of having a field for the value of a book has been brought up before, but has never generated much enthusiasm. I don't remember exactly why.

>304 SandraArdnas: Got it, thanks!

>305 r.orrison: Thanks, but the issue is that I’ve created more than one wiki page. >298 humouress:

You can put links to all of your other Wiki pages on your wiki home page.

>306 deb6-11: >307 krazy4katz:

Re: field for value. The idea has been brought up a few times. I'm not going to try to summarise the discussion. Instead, here is a list of other times that this idea has been brought up and vigorously debated for and against. So far, the nays seem to have it, for various reasons outlined in those threads.

Here is LT's founder responding to another request for a price field. (A number of said arguments pro and con are outlined in that thread, too.)

Edit to add: Private comments seems to be the preferred field to use for price/value information, as >307 krazy4katz: noted.

Way cool redesign!
I noticed that if you put the cursor over a touchstone or a LT link, there's a pop-up with a mini info box.
I'm luuuuving that ❣️ Kudos to the devs, eh?

>311 SandyAMcPherson: See https://www.librarything.com/topic/310208#

This seems like the best thread to put new ideas in for the LT2 Redesign.

Regarding profile comments and Talk posts/threads: when someone hits the “Reply” button on a profile comment or Talk post, is it possible to be able to see the exact post that person was replying to?

So, on Talk it would insert the ># of the post before your response, and on profile comments it would note which of your messages the member was replying to.

I’m not sure how the profile comment replies would end up looking on the site-side of things, though if it were up to me I'd prefer them nested within the conversation (that may involve more work than necessary).

I’m mainly thinking of notification emails for profile comments that you reply to. For example, this would help us (LT staff) know exactly what ER book we're replying about when a member posts to our profile page, “I haven’t received this”, or something similar. I could see this being useful for non-LT staff, too. Surely we have a post ID stored somewhere, so this shouldn't be too hard to implement.

How the profile comment notifications would look, in my mind: the notification would include something at the beginning like, “Replying to, “this is the start of the message they’re replying to…(see full post)” with a direct link in the "(see full post)" text to the post that member is replying to, so you can see it in the conversation thread.

kristilabrie (#313):

So, on Talk it would insert the ># of the post before your response, and on profile comments it would note which of your messages the member was replying to.

Speaking purely to the Talk aspect, ugh. Oftentimes I'm responding to the thread as a whole, or to multiple posts, and don't want this. And I never use the auto-link syntax, even when I am directly responding to a person, not since the decision was made to allow posters to delete their entire Talk history and thus render such links meaningless. I'll manually quote instead. There needs to be a way to allow responses that aren't to a single post, and to allow us to manually preserve the history of who we're responding to without having it doubleed up.

>314 lorax: Absolutely, I think I understand what you're saying. I'm not saying that replying to an entire thread would do this, but only if you clicked the "Reply" button on a specific message within the thread. If you scroll to the bottom of the thread and click the "Post message" button to reply to the thread generally, or to reply to multiple posts, I'm not looking to change that at all.

Do you still think the former example should be nixed entirely, then?

>315 kristilabrie: It sounds like you want a threaded structure. You should talk to Tim since he was adamant that he didn't want that.

>316 jjwilson61: I'm aware, no I'm not looking for that on Talk at all. I'm open to the idea on profile comments but I don't feel strongly about it. I mainly want to be able to see what post someone's replying to on my profile page... that was the motivation for thinking of the idea.

I like the idea that if you click ‘Reply’ on a post it will still be posted to the bottom of the thread but will also automatically add the post number. That was what was suggested, yes?

But if you just go to the bottom and add a message, it will be business as usual.

>313 kristilabrie: I really like this idea applied to Talk.

I've seen topics where people were obviously replying to a previous comment, but hadn't linked it, so their message made little sense.

Also, on my computer it's easy to add the link, but it's a real pain to do it on my phone screen. Being able to touch "Reply" on my phone and get the link automatically inserted in a new message would be excellent!

kristilabrie (#315):

I'm not saying that replying to an entire thread would do this, but only if you clicked the "Reply" button on a specific message within the thread. If you scroll to the bottom of the thread and click the "Post message" button to reply to the thread generally, or to reply to multiple posts, I'm not looking to change that at all.

In a long thread that can be a really long scroll. If that becomes necessary to avoid undeletable links, I can do it, but it seems like having separate "Reply to message" and "Post to thread" buttons for people who want a specific response to a comment with brittle links and those who are responding more generally might be an alternative?

(If you're on a computer rather than phone or tablet, you can jump to the end of the thread by hitting the End key. I expect lorax knows this, but perhaps the tip is useful to someone.)

Not all keyboards have an End key. (I'm on a Mac laptop, which doesn't.)

>322 lorax: Cmd down arrow? I'm on a MacBook Pro but I use an external keyboard as I loathe laptop keyboards.

So.

Six months out and where are we? Any updates LT peeps?

>318 humouress: and >319 NorthernStar:, Yeah that's what I was proposing.

>320 lorax: Ah, I see your use case here! I was thinking hitting "Reply" would just insert the ># of the post text for you, which could be deleted, but your "Reply to message" and "Post to thread" options seem more useful here.

>324 Bookmarque: I'll see if @conceptDawg can offer any updates soon. Thanks for your patience!

>324 Bookmarque: & >325 kristilabrie: Yep. We are actually moving right along on the update. Sorry I haven't shared any more screenshots but there have not been that many visual changes from the last time I updated. Now it's just the hard work of converting ALL of the current LT pages over to all new display code. We're also fighting our day-to-day issues which have caused progress on LT2 to be slower than we'd want, but we knew that was likely to happen with such a small crew of developers.

But good progress is being made. And I'll post an update soon.

>326 conceptDawg:
Thanks!

>326 conceptDawg: Cool. Thanks.

Library Catalogues Overview (Libib and LibraryThing)

This pretty much sums up why this needed for those outside the LT bubble. This is long overdue.

>329 stretch: I'm confused why the vlogger prefers Libib. Poking around libib.com leaves me feeling more confused. LT offers all the same features for book cataloguers without the risk of accidentally deleting an entire library in the app. Libib is so visually bare that it's hard to remember it has anything to do with books, movies, music, or any physical objects. The app's review entry screen hides everything that might be needed to check spelling or reading notes. I disagree with the vlogger about the attractiveness of that blue color. The gray font is difficult to read.

There's also an uncomfortable lack of transparency. Who owns Libib? Where is the information about added items coming from? How many users does it have? Does it sell reviews? Its level of simplicity is deceptive, sacrificing basic information for a "clean" appearance.

Please, LT doesn't need to be like that.

>330 aspirit: It's not that Libib is better and LT needs to more like it, It's that LT comes with a steep learning curve, with a complexity of features buried in menus that most folks looking to simply add books. Hell the add book button doesn't even work as most new users expect. New users aren't willing to explore all LT has to offer if the first hurdle is so large and overhelming. I think reducing the end users learning curve to using LT would make it a LOT more attractive then Libib but right now it is all bit much and going underutilized. Preferences on color not withstanding it makes what it fundamental does easier and not adding layers of complexity to do the very basic and simple things like adding a book that you see on the work page to your library without having to re-search for that title on another page.

The one thing i did like about Libib though was being able to lookup Titles in your library by letter, instead of Page. Not a necessary thing of course just something different and convienent.

>330 aspirit:

Also for users like me libib would cost $99 per year.

>331 stretch: I agree with you that LT has a learning curve, but I view that as a very good thing.

Yikes, Libib locks away basic classification data behind a $99/year paywall? No thanks! Why on Earth would anyone see that as something to emulate?

I didn't watch the video. The presenter was just too painful to watch, but a quick look at the site sent me off quickly. Not just the cost. Too many unanswered questions.

From FAQ : ...using your devices camera.

>334 lorax: I never said emulate, I was point out to the outsiders view of LT. I don't give a flying monkey about Libib. It's a video that compares cataloging sites. The design is a barrier to new users heres some of the reasons why kind of thing.

I didn't watch the video. I don't have that kind of time - if anyone thinks that their time is so much more important than mine that I need to sit through them talking at me rather than them actually writing words down, they are sadly mistaken. I instead looked at the site - the one that you said we should be imitating because some random vlogger thought it was better than LT.

>337 lorax: "I don't have that kind of time - if anyone thinks that their time is so much more important than mine that I need to sit through them talking at me rather than them actually writing words down, they are sadly mistaken."
I wish to sunscribe to your (written) newsletter.

I's true of almost all videos. Just occasionally a short video is a useful adduct to written technical description of how to do something, or a very quick 'ooh' moment of something impressive, but that's the sole occasions when they're appropriate. I very much dislike the current trend that because we can make a video of something we should.

Also, of course, different things appeal to different people. Some 'outsiders' might be LT type people. Others might be Libib type people, others might be GoodReads type people. The fact that there are different kinds of book sites is a GOOD thing. They are designed for different types of people.

Some people may actually enjoy watching someone wave her hands around saying uh, uh, and not getting to the point. If so, they can watch most of the vlogger videos I've seen the beginnings of.

Some handwork videos are helpful. Usually it's the ones that are only half the length of the others on the same topic.

>331 stretch: my take away isn't what you'd wanted.

Libib appears to be serving people who want to add books without thinking about where the data comes from or how it's used by the site's owners-- and who will ignore features or pay for a subscription. How much does demographic overlap with LT's?

I initially watched roughly ten minutes total of the video-- introductions and random bits throughout. That's what first confused me.

The presenter (a better term than what I was using) described a preference for Libib's colors and, sure, disinterest in many of LibraryThing's features. The Add button wasn't a prominent part of the discussion I saw. The presenter did talk about how book cataloguers can ignore parts of LT. She also admitted to ignoring some of Libib's features. So...?

So that's why I looked at Libib's website. Why would someone sign up there instead of LT? Are people more likely to stick with Libib than LT?

After looking through the FAQ, About page, and even other reviews offsite, I don't understand Libib's appeal.

I went back to watch a little more of the YouTube video and heard the presenter have fun showing off LT. Seeing more of the video captures along with "I don't know what happened", I also no longer believe cataloguing in Libib is simpler, only different.

ETA: The presenter in the video might have moved entirely to LT (or away) by now. I didn't pay attention to user names while watching. If here: Hello!

We're in the 300s. Do we need to continue this topic in a new thread?

>340 aspirit: After looking through the FAQ, About page, and even other reviews offsite, I don't understand Libib's appeal.

I started using the app back when it first came out, 2008ish I think it was. I use Libib for my movie and CD collections. That way, when I'm out and about, I can do a quick lookup to see if I have a certain movie and if so, which format (VHS, DVD, blu-ray). I don't pay to use Libib, and I don't care about anything other than the movie title and the format that I own. Adding a movie takes less than half a second -- you scan the barcode and it's in "My Movie Collection." I don't have to do any further editing.

For my books, I want all the fancy shmancy, sometimes-an-archaelogical-dig-to-find-and-understand cataloging features, and that's why I use LT.

I did not interpret >329 stretch: as saying LT should imitate, emulate or replicate Libib - I read their message as pointing out the huge learning curve for new users to LT, especially when compared to a more newb friendly UI/UX like Libib's.

>195 timspalding:, >325 kristilabrie:, >326 conceptDawg:

I hope you and all LT users have stayed well in these very sad Covid-19 times!

I hope for the future.

Can LT continue to work?
Has LT2 made any progress?

All the best for everyone

>343 birder4106: Thanks for your kind thoughts! Same to you.

Thankfully, as a remote company, we are still able to continue our work (albeit most of us are now working at home with kids, so, YMMV).

I'll see if @conceptDawg can offer any updates on LT2 progress. :)

Progress report:
LT2 progress has slowed slightly while I have been pulled away to work on a couple of other projects. One of those projects will be a major rework and redesign of an LT feature—to be released in the next week or so, which was also made LT2-ready while designing it, so technically LT2 work hasn't actually stopped.
Another project is COVID-specific so had to be done now.
We've also been working on a few major browser/security issues that had to get completed by deadlines. So we're all just as busy as before COVID and our entire staff is still working (we even re-hired another temp developer during quarantine).
I'm hoping to get back to LT2 within the next day or two.

>344 kristilabrie:, >345 conceptDawg:

Thank you for your answer.

Another small point to look forward to in difficult times.

Stay healthy.

>345 conceptDawg:
Good to hear that!